Category: Religions

HOW DO WE COMPARE?

Comparing Jewish Engagement across the Anglo Diaspora

By Reviva Hasson

For many South African Jews, the question often comes up: how do we compare?

Whether thinking about emigration, family abroad, or simply the state of Jewish life globally, we instinctively measure ourselves against communities in other countries. Anecdotal experiences from friends and family provide one perspective, but another avenue offering a more objective, broader birds-eye view approach is a comparison based on survey data.

The Jewish Community Survey of South Africa (JCSSA) is the largest survey of South African Jews. It was conducted in 2019 by the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies, based at the University of Cape Town, in collaboration with the London based Institute for Jewish Policy Research. Similar Jewish population surveys have been run across the Anglo world in similar periods which creates the unique opportunity to be able to compare Jewish populations, – in the United States Pew2020, the United Kingdom NJCS 2022, Australia Gen17 2017, and Canada SJC 2018.

A comparison with these four countries is not arbitrary. South Africa shares important features with other Anglo communities based on a common language and cultural heritage rooted in British institutions. Moreover as 70% of South Africa’s Jewish emigrants have moved to these four countries, the comparison is also personal.

Countries can be compared on many different variables. In terms of the size of the Jewish population, America has the largest population outside of Israel with some 6.5 million Jews, Canada has 400 000 Jews, the UK 312 000 and Australia 117 000. South Africa ranks 11th in world Jewry with 52 300 Jews. This article however focuses on Jewish life – how Jews express their Jewish identity through relationships, beliefs, practices, and values.

In the analysis that follows the comparison is grouped into four themes:

  • sociocultural engagement
  • religious engagement,
  • connection to Israel, and
  • the value placed on different elements of Jewish identity.  

Of course, splitting Jewish life into different categories is artificial and any behaviour can be experienced in multifaceted ways, however for the purpose of this article it is useful to think about Jewish identity taking expression through different avenues.

SOCIOCULTURAL ENGAGEMENT

This theme explores the social and communal dimensions of Jewish life, including friendship networks, family traditions, charitable giving, and participation in activities that connect Jews to one another. While a Passover seder is rooted in religious ritual, it’s also a powerful expression of culture, bringing multiple generations together around a shared tradition. Similarly, the synagogue is a house of prayer, but it is also one of the primary spaces where community takes form.

In the figures that follow South Africa is shown by the black bar with the percentage of the community that answered in the affirmative to each measure.  When interpreting the results it’s important to appreciate that the percentage who did not answer “yes” mainly include those that said “no” but also includes other responses like “some/sometimes” and “don’t know” or “Prefer not to say”. Where there are missing bars for a certain country it’s because that question was not asked in the relevant survey.

Figure 1. Sociocultural Engagement

Figure 1 shows that 57% of South African Jews are members of a synagogue, similar to the UK and Canada but below Australia where almost 80% of the community are members. 71% of South African report having mostly Jewish friends and 81% attend or host a Passover seder every year – both of which are comparable to Australia.  88% of South Africans made a financial donation to a Jewish charity in the past year, similar to the UK.

Intermarriage rates measure the proportion of marriages in a given timeframe that are between Jews and non-Jews, here South Africa exhibits the lowest rates with intermarriage at 17%. by contrast in America the rate is close to 60%

Taken together, the data suggest that South African Jewry exhibits strong levels of sociocultural Jewish engagement by Anglo-diaspora standards.

RELIGIOUS ENGAGEMENT

Religious engagement indicators examined in Figure 2 below include both measures of practical observance and expressions of belief.

Figure 2. Religious Engagement

South Africa performs among the strongest communities and leads in areas such as belief in God (78%), lighting Shabbat candles (52%) and fasting on Yom Kippur (76%). Significantly lower proportions of the community keep kosher (33%) and view halacha (Jewish law) as central to being Jewish (26%).

It’s interesting to observe that while only 21% of South African Jews indicated in the JCSSA that they are Shomer Shabbat (data not shown here) – a marker for religious Orthodox observance, the above data reveal significantly higher levels of participation across other religious life indicators. This suggests that religious engagement in South Africa extends beyond a small observant minority.

CONNECTION TO ISRAEL

A third dimension of Jewish engagement is connection to Israel, which for many Jews serves as an important expression of their Jewish identity, serving as a homeland and the centre of Jewish peoplehood.

Figure 3. Connection to Israel

Connection to Israel is an area in which South African Jewry stands out (Figure 3). 66% of South African express a strong attachment to Israel, and when those who report being “moderately” attached are included, 90% express a positive connection. Significantly higher than elsewhere in the Anglo world.

The vast majority (89%) have visited Israel at least once and many have visited multiple times, a figure matched by Australia and the United Kingdom. By comparison, fewer than half of American Jews have visited Israel.

The one area where South Africa performs relatively poorly in terms of its Israel engagement profile is Hebrew literacy where only 24% report being able to speak Hebrew quite well, far below Canada’s 40%. The proportion in South Africa who can read Hebrew is higher (54%)

WHAT MATTERS MOST TO JEWISH IDENTITY

Figure 4 shifts the focus from behaviour to attitudes, examining the proportion of respondents who rated various elements of Jewish identity as being “very important” to their personal sense of Jewish identity.  The exact same question was asked in the UK and Australia surveys hence our comparison is limited to these three countries.

Figure 4. Elements of Jewish Identity. The percentage that responded that this element was “very important” to their Jewish identity

Note. Q. How important or unimportant are each of the following to your own sense of Jewish Identity? This graph only shows the percentage that answered, “very important”. The other options included: important, unimportant, don’t know and prefer not to say.

South Africa however stands out. In all but one of the thirteen statements, South African Jews are more likely to select “very important” than their Australian and British counterparts. Moreover, in five areas South Africa stands out particularly strongly compared to the UK and Australia: moral and ethical behaviour (85%), remembering the Holocaust (81%), donating money to charity (55%), belief in God (53%) and payer (36%).

A SUCCESS STORY WITH CAVEATS

Taken together, the findings reveal a community that compares remarkably well with its counterparts across the Anglo-Jewish world. The South African Jewish population consistently ranks among the most engaged across multiple dimensions of Jewish life. Moreover, the high levels of importance attached to many elements of Jewish identity suggest that this engagement is not merely behavioural, but underpinned by strongly held values, beliefs, and sense of Jewish peoplehood. Overall, South Africa emerges as the strongest performing of the major English-speaking Jewish communities, with Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom occupying a middle position, while the United States ranks lowest overall. This is a particularly striking finding. Despite its relatively small size, South African Jewry emerges as one of the most engaged Jewish communities in the Anglo diaspora, consistently punching above its demographic weight.

These affirming findings about SA Jewry should be viewed alongside several important qualifications. South African Jewry is not a single homogenous community, and important differences exist across the geographical landscape. Across almost every measure from religious belief and practice to sociocultural expressions, connections and belonging, Johannesburg Jewry emerges as the most engaged Jewish centre in the country. Cape Town and Durban exhibit significantly lower levels of Jewish engagement in most areas. The national picture therefore conceals significant regional variation.

Moreover, South African Jewish life is not static. Tracking specific forms of Jewish engagement across historical surveys reveals diverging trends. On the one hand, there has been a gradual increase in Orthodox observance.  The proportion of Jews who keep shabbat has risen from 9% in 1974 to 21% in 2019. This is mirrored in the data on Jewish strands of identity where a quarter of South African Jews have switched to a more religious Jewish strand of identity than the one they were raised in.

On the other hand, there is a parallel trend away from Jewish engagement. Intermarriage rates have increased such that in the 1970s 7% of all marriages occurring were interfaith unions, while in the most recent period (2015-2019) this has increased to 19%. Similarly, several markers that were historically near universal such as attending Passover seders, fasting on Yom Kippur, and lighting Shabbat candles, have declined in recent decades.

Why South African Jewry compares so strongly with its counterparts abroad is ultimately a question that warrants further study. However, several domestic factors likely play an important role, these include: exceptionally high rates of Jewish day school attendance – 75% of school-aged Jewish children currently attend Jewish schools, the highest in the Anglo world; relatively low incidence of intermarriage, strong communal institutions, and the dense social networks characteristic of a small and geographically concentrated Jewish population. Scholars have also pointed to broader historical and social influences, including the community’s largely Lithuanian heritage, the role of Orthodox outreach movements, and aspects of South Africa’s unique social and political history that may have reinforced communal cohesion.

Comparisons such as these do not tell us every dimension of a Jewish community. They do, however, provide empirical validation for something that many South African Jews have long felt intuitively: that there is something distinctive about both the breadth and strength of Jewish life in South Africa. Claims about the vitality of Jewish life in South Africa are not merely anecdotal; they are supported by a substantial body of evidence spanning religious practice, social connectedness, Israel attachment and the importance attached to many elements of Jewish identity. This broad-based pattern of Jewish engagement is perhaps one of the defining characteristics of contemporary South African Jewry.


To dive deeper into this fascinating set of findings based on the SA Jewish Community Survey, please join Midrasha Melton’s 2-part Online course with Reviva herself – Monday evenings, October 19 and 26 from 19H15-20H15 SAST.

To register/More Info: www.meltoncapetown.org or Lauren Snitcher at lauren@snitcher.org

See flyer above for details.

https://csirt.uct.ac.za/report-incident




Feature picture: Cape Town’s Old Synagogue, the first synagogue built in South Africa in 1863, which since 2000 has housed the South African Jewish Museum. (Photo: Ariadne Van Zandbergen/Alamy).



About the writer:

Reviva Hasson is a social scientist at the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies at UCT. In 2019 she coordinated the nationwide survey of the South African Jewish population.









While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

THE FORGOTTEN PEOPLE OF THE WORLD

The time has come to re-evaluate why more aid is given to some refugees than others in need.

By Neville Berman

Today there are between 30-45 million Kurds in the world. They are mainly Sunni Muslims. They are the largest ethnic group in the world without a sovereign country. The Kurds live across a vast area of mountainous regions spanning Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. They are indigenous to the regions that they have inhabited for thousands of years. Depending where they live, they speak Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic and Persian. They are pro Western in political ideology, and helped to defeat ISIS. The Kurds have never fully united under one leadership. In 2017, the Kurds in Iraq organized a referendum. 92% voted for Kurdish Statehood. All attempts to form a Kurdish State have been brutally suppressed and never recognized by the United Nations. The Kurds have been attacked in every country that they live in, and have been robbed of their rights to the profits from oil produced in places that they once occupied in Iraq and Iran.

Robbed of their Rights. Never galvanizing the massive support like the Palestinians, a small number of the Kurdish diaspora gather on 2026/01/28 in Leicester Square to protest and call on the UK government to take action against the Syrian military’s offensive in Kurdish-held areas of northeast Syria. (Photo: Krisztian Elek/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has ordered the killing and imprisonment of thousands of Kurds in Turkey and in Syria. All his actions have been ignored by the western world, the liberal press and human rights organizations.

The Kurds are undoubtedly one of the forgotten people of the world. The irony is that the Kurds have all the attributes of a State. They have land, their own language and culture, and are completely viable if they had control of the oil that is under their land.

Unfortunately, the world has never supported statehood for the Kurds. 

Free Pass. While President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s administration has conducted extensive military campaigns and a severe political crackdown against armed Kurdish separatist groups and affiliated politicians,  there are few international protests in support of the Kurds against the Turkish president.

Another group of people who have never been recognized as a State, are the Baloch people. There are over 12 million Baloch people in the world. The Baloch people are ethnic Iranian people, who are indigenous to the Balochi regions spanning Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. The areas that the Baloch people occupy in Iran and Pakistan are contiguous. They speak Baluchi and the language of the country in which they live.  Over eight million Balochi people live in Pakistan and between 2-4 million live in south eastern Iran. The Baloch also have a long history in Oman dating back centuries. Today over 1 million Baloch people live in Oman. Over 380,000 Baloch live in the United Arab Emirates. Despite having land, a unique language and culture, they have never been offered a State of their own. They have been brutally suppressed by the Iranian regime. Pictures have emerged of Baloch leaders hanging from cranes in public squares in areas that the Baloch occupy. The hangings are a warning to the Baloch people not to protest against the regime.

Baloch leader Executed. While mostly escaping global attention, protests break out in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi against the hanging in Iran of a militant leader Abdolmalek Rigi who was “… fighting for the rights of the Baloch in Iran.”

The world totally ignores the Baloch people.   

The Rohingya people lived in Myanmar for generations. They are a Muslim minority group living in a Buddhist-majority country.  In 1982, the Rohingya were denied recognition in Myanmar as an ethnic group, and faced persecution. Decades of discrimination boiled over in August 2017. Armed attacks and serious human rights violations forced hundreds of thousands to flee. Today more than 1 million Rohingya live in poverty in Bangladesh. The majority are living in the Cox Bazaar region that is now the home to the world’s largest refugee camp. The United Nations has described the Rohingya as “the most persecuted minority in the world.”  Obviously, the Jews are the most persecuted minority in the history of mankind, but the UN is never going to acknowledge this fact. The Rohingya refugees receive help from the UNHCR and other humanitarian organizations. The help is minimal and the Rohingya are barely surviving. They face ethnic cleansing, and are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Their lives are total misery.  Not one wealthy Muslim country has offered to help their fellow Muslims.

The Rohingya are another of the world’s forgotten people. 

Rohingya on the Run. Where was the outrage for these dead refugee Rohingya adults and children killed after a boat capsized off Teknaf, Bangladesh on August 31, 2017 while trying to escape ongoing violence in Myanmars Rakhine state? (Photo: Zakir Hossain Chowdhury/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

In 1962 Rwanda gained independence from Belgian colonial administration. In 1973 Juvenal Habyarimana became the second Hutu President of Rwanda. From October 1, 1990 a major Rwandan Civil war erupted between the government’s Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) and the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). On April 6, 1994 President Habyarimana was assassinated when his plane was shot down by the Tutsis. The assassination triggered the Tutsi genocide and in 1994 between 800,000 to 1 million Tutsis in Rwanda were killed by the Hutu majority in savage fighting. Approximately 75% of the Tutsi population were slaughtered in the course of 100 days. While France did not hold colonial rule over Rwanda, it maintained significant political involvement in the country during the 1990’s and armed and trained the Hutu army.  At the start of the genocide, France deployed troops to Rwanda to evacuate foreign nationals, and then left the Tutsis to their fate.  In 2021, President Macron of France acknowledged French responsibility for being “blind” to what was happening during the Rwanda genocide, and asked Rwanda to forgive France for its past behaviour. The Tutsis are without doubt one of the forgotten peoples of the world.

Blind to Barbarism. Visiting Rwanda in 2021, French President Macron acknowledged responsibility for being “blind” to what occurred during the Rwanda genocide when Tutsis were slaughtered in their thousands and the world and its institutions stood by. (Photo:Ludovic Marin / AFP)

In 2003, a catastrophic war in Sudan started when two rebel groups known as the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) launched a war against the government of Sudan. The Sudanese government responded by forming an armed Arab militia known as the Janjaweed, to crush the rebellion. The Janjaweed, together with the Sudanese Army, massacred between 200,000 to 300,000 non-Arab ethnic Sudanese. They created a massive humanitarian catastrophe by implementing a scorched earth policy that forced millions to flee. Tens of thousands of women were raped. An estimated 2.7 million people lost their homes between 2003 to 2005.

In 2023 the war in Sudan reignited. The war continues to this day.  The UN now estimates that over 14 million Sudanese have been displaced. Approximately 10 million have been displaced internally and 4 million have fled to neighbouring Chad, South Sudan, Egypt and other neighbouring countries. Widespread famine, lack of adequate health facilities, and basic human requirements, are now threatening the lives of ten million displaced people in Sudan. In 2025, the US Secretary of State, determined that members of the Sudanese government forces known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are committing genocide in Darfur.  No end to the war is in sight, with aerial and drone attacks becoming more common. The world has ignored the catastrophe in Sudan.

Slaughter in Sudan. This photo taken during a rally against genocide in the Sudan outside the embassy of Sudan in Washington, DC, captures the boredom and disinterest of much of the world.(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Basically, the world does not care about civil wars in Africa that have displaced and killed millions of people.

According to the United Nations (UN), there are 117 million people in the world in 2026, who have been uprooted by conflict, violence, or persecution. Instead of concentrating on the problems caused by the 117 million displaced people who are facing ethnic cleansing, widespread famine, and massive displacement all over the world, the world continues to invest more effort and financial aid to the Palestinian refugees than on any other refugees in the world. The one thing that is remarkable about this help, is how little it has improved the lives of the Palestinian people. What it has done is to make Palestinian leaders into either multi-millionaires or billionaires.

Selective Concern. Despite the over 117 million displaced people facing ethnic cleansing, widespread famine, and massive displacement all over the world,the ongoing situation with the Palestinians continues to command global attention as evidenced in the media and public protests. Seen here is a Palestine Action Group’s March in Sydney. (Photo:  Flavio Brancaleone/AAP)

The Palestinians have mastered the art of depicting themselves as victims, and the western liberal world, which is mainly in massive debt, continues to pour money into the Palestinian coffers. It is time for the world to re-evaluate its support for the Palestinians. Jordan is the name of a river. It was never a state.  In 1922, the British hived off 76% of the mandated area of Palestine and renamed it Transjordan. They then offered Transjordan to the Hashemites who had been kicked out of Arabia by Abdul Aziz, the head of the House of Saud. Transjordan was renamed as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The Hashemites are not from Jordan. The Palestinians are the majority of the Kingdom of Jordan’s population. By both location and by being the majority of the population, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is in reality a Palestinian State. What the world should be looking at is why Palestinian refugee camps still exist in Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and especially in Gaza. The whole question of why the world has ignored the plight of over a hundred million displaced people, and why the Palestinian refugees have not received citizenship in any of the 22 Arab states in the Middle East needs to re-evaluated.



About the writer:

Accountant Neville Berman had an illustrious sporting career in South Africa, being twice awarded the South African State Presidents Award for Sport and was a three times winner of the South African Maccabi Sportsman of the Year Award.  In 1978 he immigrated to the USA  to coach the United States men’s field hockey team, whereafter, in 1981 he immigrated to Israel where he practiced as an accountant and then for 20 years was the Admin Manager at the American International School in Even Yehuda, Israel.  He is married with two children and one granddaughter.








While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

MAHSA’S MURDER

Why Mahsa Amini’s death still matters – especially this year.

By Marziyeh Amirizadeh

This week’s anniversary of the arrest, beating, and murder of Mahsa Amini in 2022 is more important to be remembered – than perhaps more than ever before. Mahsa’s murder triggered one of the most widespread and enduring protests within Iran and overseas against the Islamic Republic under the banner of “Women, Life, Freedom.” Mahsa’s murder represents the widespread suffering of the Iranian people and misogyny that has victimized Iranian women and girls over nearly half a century. Mahsa’s murder is relevant still today, emblematic of the threats the Islamic Republic on America and the world.

Call for Justice. Protestors outside of the United Nations on Sept. 21, 2022 in New York City in support of Masha Amini. (Photo: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

None of this suffering is new, not from my childhood, and not from Mahsa’s brutal murder four years ago. But this year, if the world ever needed evidence of this brutality and suffering of millions of Iranians, the ayatollahs put their evil on center stage with the massacre of tens of thousands of Iranians, as many as 60,000 in just two days in January, and thousands more since. Just this year alone.

For me, Mahsa’s murder is very personal, and something that cannot be stated enough. It unavoidably triggers many traumas I will always bear. But it’s not just her memory, suffering, and horrible murder that cause me trauma.

 In 2009, I was arrested and sentenced to death by hanging simply for converting to Christianity, a “crime” in the Islamic Republic called “apostacy”. Thank God I was saved, but in nine months of imprisonment, I suffered tremendous physical and psychological hardships, witnessing rape, torture, and the execution of innocents like my dear friend and cellmate Shirin Alamhooli, who suffered unspeakable torture and whose body was never returned to her family.

Shirin, like Mahsa Amini, was a young Kurdish woman. Her crime? Daring to dream of freedom. So, when I think of Mahsa Amini’s murder, it’s not as a distant observer, but as a sister in suffering. Mahsa, was a vibrant 22-year-old Kurdish woman, arrested in September 2022 by the so-called “morality police” for an improperly worn hijab. She was savagely beaten into a coma and died days later in custody. Her murder wasn’t an isolated incident — it was just another example of the regime’s savage war on women, on dignity, on humanity itself. Mahsa’s story remains a blazing torch that we all must carry, illuminating the unyielding evil of the ayatollahs and demanding justice with the prayer that soon their tyranny will be extinguished.

Why does Mahsa’s murder still echo so powerfully today? Because the savagery hasn’t stopped; it has only intensified. On top of the massacre of tens of thousands of Iranians yearning for freedom and the restoration of Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the Islamic Republic continues to execute protesters, journalists, and dissidents at a horrifying rate, They hang innocent victims many for vague charges like “enmity against God” or “corruption on earth” not with any pretense of justice, but to instill fear and brutalize Iranians daily. Women are dragged from the streets for defying medieval hijab laws, beaten and raped in detention centers, and victimized through deep seeded misogyny that brainwashes men to think that women are worth only half of a man.

Hair–raising. A demonstrator holds hair during a protest in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, Sept. 23, 2022.(Photo: Christian Mang/Reuters)

The regime’s “Woman, Life, Freedom” crackdown lingers like a poison in the air, with underground resistance simmering despite the bullets and beatings. This year, the bullets came with an added price, not just gunning down and murdering tens of thousands, but injuring and disfiguring many more times that. Families of victims who were killed were forced to pay thousands of dollars in a crumbling economy for the “cost” of the bullets used to kill their loved ones, before they could retrieve the bodies for burial.

These are not anomalies; they are the regime’s very blueprint for exerting control. Brainwashed from childhood to chant “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” Iranians are hostages in their own land. The ayatollahs fund global terrorism through proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, exporting their hatred while starving their people. In the once thriving nation of my birth, simple things like water and electricity are scarce.

Mahsa’s death ignited uprisings where women burned their hijabs and men faced gunfire, proving that the spirit of freedom endures. This year tens of thousands of people turned the murder of their loved ones into acts of defiance against the regime demonstrating that the yearning for freedom cannot and will not be extinguished. Mahsa’s murder is relevant still because it remains an open wound that needs healing.  As the regime’s grip weakens, it clings on through instilling fear, brutalizing any resistance, and foreign appeasement.

Sights of Solidarity. An Iranian woman living in Turkey, reacts after she cut her hair during a protest outside the Iranian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey on Sept. 21, 2022. (Photo: Murad Sezer/Reuters)

The savagery of the Islamic Republic knows no bounds. This is a regime that hijacked a proud Persian civilization in 1979, imposing Sharia law that treats women as property and minorities as expendable. I lived it: in Evin Prison I saw political prisoners tortured, Christians like me branded filthy apostates, and Kurds like Mahsa marginalized, tortured, and murdered. Beyond Iran’s borders, the ayatollahs arm terrorists who slaughter innocents, from Israeli civilians to American troops. They pursue nuclear weapons not for energy, but for domination, the tools to carry out their intent to wipe Israel off the map. Their ideology is a cancer, spreading antisemitism, misogyny, and Islamic extremism worldwide.

Negotiations with and appeasement of the regime are a fool’s errand. These only embolden them, as it did under Obama and Biden, allowing them to rebuild to repress. The regime isn’t reformable; it’s rotten to its core, built on lies and its victims’ blood.

Rage in Rome. People shout slogans and hold signs during a demonstration organized by “Woman Life Freedom” (Donna, Vita, Libertà) movement to mark the first death anniversary of Mahsa Amini, on September 16, 2023 in Rome, Italy. (Photo: Antonio Masiello/Getty Images)

The only solution to end this nightmare is to bring down the ayatollahs – regime change, swift and decisive. Iranians aren’t calling for tweaks or talks; they’re demanding the end of this evil theocracy. Today, with their air defenses crippled, the economy crumbling, and not even water or electricity in many places, the time is ripe.

It’s essential to support the Iranian people – amplify their voices, strengthen their resistance, and isolate the mullahs globally. Back leaders like Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who represents the hope of millions yearning for a secular, democratic Iran, not fake reformists or MEK/NCRI cultists who betray us.

This isn’t just Iran’s fight – it’s in America’s vital interest. Yes, even if it costs more to fill up your tank. The Islamic Republic is America’s sworn enemy, funding attacks on U.S. soil, against Americans, and our allies. Their “Death to America” isn’t rhetoric; it’s policy, manifested in cyberattacks, assassinations, and nuclear threats. A nuclear-armed Iran would destabilize the Middle East, empower terrorists, and endanger global security. It’s a goal from which they will not back down, no matter how beaten or how much they beat Iranians. It can never be allowed to happen, at any cost.

Paris Protests.  Protestors take to the streets in Paris, France in a demonstration organized by the “Women’s Life Freedom” movement to mark Mahsa Amini’s first death anniversary on September 16, 2023. (Photo: Ameer Alhalbi/Getty Images)

Regime change eliminates this threat, opening the door to a stable partner in Iran. Regime change aligns with American values of liberty and human rights, preventing the spread of extremism that could flood our shores. As an American citizen, I urge: don’t negotiate with scorpions. Stand with Iranians, apply unrelenting pressure, and watch a new Persia rise.

Freedom for Iran means security for the world. In God’s name, in memory of Mahsa, Shirin, and countless other victims of the regime, now is the time to end the ayatollahs’ reign forever.



*Feature picture:A protester holds a portrait of Mahsa Amini at a demonstration in Istanbul, Turkey.  (Photo: Ozan Kose/AFP/Getty Images)



About the writer:

Marziyeh (Marzi) Amirizadeh is an Iranian American author, public speaker, human rights advocate, and President of Newpersia.org. She has written two books “Captive in Iran,” and “A Love Journey with God” which are available on www.marzisjourney.com. She is an Iranian American who immigrated to the US after being sentenced to death by hanging in Iran for the crime of converting to Christianity. She endured months of mental and physical hardships and intense interrogation in Evin prison- one of the most brutal prisons in the world. 








While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

FROM ‘BURNING BUSH’ TO BURNING QUESTIONS

How will Mount Sinai – the symbolic birthplace of the Jewish nation – being transformed into an Egyptian government megatourism project alter this sacred landscape?

By Motti Verses

Next month, around 190 kilometers from Eilat, at the place where, according to tradition, Moses received the Ten Commandments, Egypt plans to open the first phase of one of the country’s most ambitious tourism developments: the Great Transfiguration Project.

New hotels, eco-lodges, a Peace Square, cultural venues, hiking trails and extensive new infrastructure are all part of the ambitious development. The project represents an investment of approximately EGP 25 billion, or around half a billion US dollars. Once known primarily as a destination for hikers and pilgrims, the aim of Egypt’s Great Transfiguration Project is to transform the historic and sacred area surrounding Mount Sinai and Saint Catherine’s Monastery into a world-class global destination for spiritual, environmental, and cultural tourism.

The Great Transfiguration Project at Saint Catherine in the Sinai, around the sacred mountain landscape during the construction period. (Photo: Ben Hoffler)

The vision is being promoted at the highest levels of the Egyptian government with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi actively championing and directing the project framing it as Egypt’s “gift to humanity.”

The ambitions are considerable: Egyptian authorities have set a target of approximately one million tourists a year, more than three times the roughly 300,000 who visit the area annually.

For Judaism, it is difficult to overstate the symbolic significance of this place. According to biblical tradition, this is where the revelation at Mount Sinai took place and where Moses received the Tablets of the Covenant – one  of the defining moments in the identity of the Jewish people.

UNESCO, too, defines the Saint Catherine area as sacred to the three monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – and explicitly refers to the tradition according to which Moses received the Tablets here.

Moses with the Tablets of the Law. Rembrandt strips away the crowd and the landscape around Mount Sinai and depicts only the prophet, Moses, lifting the two great stone tablets, their Hebrew letters glowing out of the gloom. (Rembrandt, Moses with the Tablets of the Law, 1659. Gemaeldegalerie, Berlin.)

For Egypt, the economic logic is clear. A tourist who arrives by bus from Sharm el-Sheikh, visits the monastery, perhaps climbs the mountain and then returns, contributes little towards the local economy.  On the other hand, a visitor who stays for two or three nights requires a hotel, restaurants, guides, transportation and activities. The vision is to create a tourism product combining nature, adventure and spirituality with high-quality accommodation, turning Saint Catherine from a destination visited for a few hours into a place where travelers stay for several days.

Saint Catherine’s Monastery, within its walls is also the site traditionally associated with the Burning Bush (Photo: Joonas Plaan)

In June, the Egyptian government reported that work on the megaproject had reached approximately 97.5% completion and that the current target is to open with the first phase in October.

What Does the Project Include?

The experience of arriving in the area is set to change completely. A new visitors center covering more than 3,000 square meters is intended to serve as an organized gateway to the destination. It will include a tourist information center, restaurant and café, shops and tourism services, as well as a dome designed for screenings and immersive visual experiences.

Nearby is the Peace Square, alongside a cultural complex featuring exhibition spaces, a theater and a conference hall. The objective is to present Saint Catherine not merely as a Christian site, or as the starting point for climbing Mount Sinai, but as a place of profound significance to all three monotheistic religions.

One of the most significant changes is the expansion of the area’s hotel offering. At its heart is the Mountain Hotel, a new five-star property with approximately 144 rooms and suites, designed to blend into the mountainous landscape. Alongside it, a new Eco Lodge is being developed, with 192 rooms and an additional 56 eco-suites. 248 accommodation units in total. At the same time, the existing Eco Lodge, comprising approximately 74 accommodation units and a restaurant, is being renovated. In addition, a Mountain Tourist Resort is being built on the high plateau, featuring villas and chalets, alongside a commercial district and bazaars. It is already known that one of the hotels in the project will be managed by Germany’s Steigenberger, which currently operates 16 hotels across Egypt. Among them is the Steigenberger Hotel & Nelson Village in Taba, originally built in the 1980s by Israeli hotelier Eli Papouchado.

Taken together, these developments represent a dramatic change in both the scale and character of accommodation in an area that for years has been associated mainly with guesthouses and relatively modest hotels. It was not confirmed yet whether the new accommodation complexes will begin receiving guests as part of the October soft opening. My assessment is that they will not.

An AI-generated illustration depicting the comprehensive development plan in Sinai, including luxury hotels, an expanded airport and commercial complexes alongside Saint Catherine’s Monastery and Mount Sinai.

I have visited the monastery many times in the past and even climbed Mount Sinai when I was younger. Saint Catherine’s Monastery, founded in the sixth century, is considered one of the world’s oldest continuously functioning Christian monasteries. Within its walls is also the site traditionally associated with the Burning Bush. And therein lies an almost biblical irony. According to tradition, the bush burned without being consumed. As Egypt embarks on its Great Transfiguration, the question is:

Can Saint Catherine undergo a transformation of its own without consuming the very qualities that have made this sacred landscape so extraordinary?

Yet for me, much of the power of the experience has never been confined to the religious sites themselves. It lies equally in the immense mountain landscape, the isolation and the silence. All of these are inseparable from the character of the place.

And this is precisely where the controversy surrounding the project begins.

Burning Bush. Moses is depicted here before the Burning Bush as described in the Book of Exodus (3: 1-21). The bush was on fire, but was not consumed by the flames, hence the name. (Credit: History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Saint Catherine is a UNESCO World Heritage Site not only because of the monastery and its religious landmarks. UNESCO also emphasizes the surrounding mountainous landscape, remoteness and isolation as integral elements of the site’s universal value. As early as 2023, the World Heritage Committee, together with numerous enviromental organizations, expressed concern about the scale of the development and requested that Egypt conduct a Heritage Impact Assessment.

This is the great paradox of the new Saint Catherine: the very transformation Egypt is seeking to achieve – greater accessibility – is also what could fundamentally alter the character of the place.

Upscale hotels will facilitate more visitors to stay overnight, but they also increase the number of tourists. New roads make the destination accessible to families and older travelers, but they also bring more buses. A Visitor Center can tell the story of Saint Catherine more effectively, but it could also transform a place that once felt wild and intimate into a planned and managed tourism experience.

Saint Catherine already possesses something that wellness hotels around the world spend millions trying to manufacture artificially:

genuine silence, desert, mountains, isolation, and thousands of years of history and spirituality.

If Egypt succeeds in combining high-quality hotels, modern infrastructure and international tourism without erasing the qualities that made the place special in the first place, the Saint Catherine project could become one of the most fascinating tourism destinations in the Middle East.

One question, however, remains unanswered:

How will Judaism be represented in the project?

Around three years ago, the Abrahamic Family House opened in Abu Dhabi as a symbol of coexistence among the three Abrahamic faiths. When I visited shortly after its opening, I was deeply impressed by this extraordinary project. Within the complex, a mosque, a church and a synagogue stand side by side, equal in size and status. The synagogue, named after Maimonides, is an active Jewish house of worship and is oriented toward Jerusalem. In Abu Dhabi, Judaism is presented not simply as part of history, but as a living faith granted a visible and dignified presence.

An Emirati Muslim guide explains the essence of Judaism at the synagogue in the Abrahamic Family House complex in Abu Dhabi  (Photo: Motti Verses)

The timing of Egypt’s megatourism project for Jews is poignant. Soon, Jews around the world will celebrate Simchat Torah, rejoicing in the very Torah that, according to Jewish tradition, was first given to their people here, at Mount Sinai. As they dance with Torah scrolls thousands of years later, how will Judaism find its place in Egypt’s ambitious new development facing the mountain where that extraordinary relationship began, if at all?



About the writer:

The author, Motti Verses is a seasoned hotel expert, traveler, writer, and videographer, and formerly served as Head of Public Relations for Hilton Hotels & Resorts in Israel. Today, as a travel writer and hospitality trends analyst, his insights and experiences are regularly featured in leading Israeli media outlets.








While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

MR. PRESIDENT, YOU ASKED WHEN THE IRANIAN PEOPLE WILL RISE UP. THEY NEVER STOPPED FIGHTING

The blood of Iranians nationwide attest to endless defiance and resilience.

By Marziyeh Amirizadeh

On September 1, President Trump posted a message asking a question that deserves a direct answer:

“When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?”

Mr. President, the answer is:

 the Iranian people have been fighting for 47 years. They never stopped.

Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the people of Iran have repeatedly risen against a regime that seized their country, destroyed their freedoms, persecuted religious minorities, imprisoned political opponents, and used misogyny, terror, torture and executions to maintain power.

What has changed is not the courage of the Iranian people. What has changed is whether the world chooses to hear them.

Again and again, Iranians have filled the streets. Again and again, they have paid an enormous price. And again and again, Western governments have looked away, often choosing negotiations, appeasement, or political convenience over standing with the people of Iran.

The Iranian people have been fighting alone for decades.

Here are only some of the chapters of that long struggle.

1981–1982:THE REIGN OF TERROR  

During the early years of the Islamic Republic, the new regime launched a brutal campaign against political opponents and religious and ethnic minorities.

Thousands upon thousands were arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and executed as the clerical regime consolidated its power. Christians, Baha’is, political opponents, Kurds, Baluchis, and others experienced persecution and repression.

The message from the new regime was clear: anyone who challenged its ideology or authority could become a target.

Fueled by the Iranian Cultural Revolution decreed by Ruhollah Khomeini, the 1981–1982 Iran massacres were a state-sponsored campaign aimed at exterminating political and religious adversaries. Children and women were among those executed.

1988: THE PRISON MASSACRES

In 1988, one of the darkest crimes in the history of the Islamic Republic took place. Following an order from Ayatollah Khomeini, thousands of prisoners were executed over several months.

Victims were buried in secret mass graves.

Families were denied information about their loved ones.

The world moved on.

An informational Board at Whitehall, London draws attention to the 1988 Massacre of the Political Prisoners in Iran. (Photo: Loredana Sangiuliano/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

1999: THE STUDENT UPRISING

In July 1999, Iranian students rose against the regime following the closure of the reformist newspaper Salam. I witnessed those protests myself. I saw students being attacked by regime forces. I saw Basij members chasing protesters and, beating them, throwing people from buildings, shooting at them in the streets. I remember the terror of watching what was happening from the rooftop of my home. The crackdown became one of the defining moments of my generation.

I will never forget those days. And I will never forget how quickly the world forgot them.

Witnessed by the writer, the Iranian Student Protests of July 1999, also known as 18th of Tir was one the most widespread public protests to occur in Iran since Iranian Revolution.(Photo: Hassan Sarbakhsian)

2009:  THE GREEN MOVEMENT

In June 2009, millions of Iranians took to the streets after the disputed presidential election. I witnessed this too, from inside Evin Prison. The demonstrations became known as the Green Movement. People marched peacefully and demanded that their voices be heard. The regime responded with violence, mass arrests, torture, and killings.

At the time, I was imprisoned because of my faith in Jesus. From inside prison, I witnessed the consequences of the regime’s crackdown. The women’s ward swelled with hundreds of new prisoners, many displaying signs of the brutality they suffered on the streets where they were arrested.

I also watched the international community fail to stand decisively with the Iranian people. President Obama’s silence was a devastating betrayal.

Supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi in Tehran before the presidential election of 2009, when the Green Movement rose out of massive street protests. (Photo: Ben Curtis/AP)

2011: KHUZESTAN AND AHVAZ     

In April 2011, protests erupted in Khuzestan, as part of the broader wave of uprisings sweeping the Middle East. Iranian forces again responded with violence. Reports of deaths, injuries, and mass arrests followed.

Once again, Iranian protesters paid the price.

2017–2018: THE NATIONWIDE PROTESTS 

Beginning in December 2017, protests on political reform quickly spread across more than 100 cities, challenging the entire system. People shouted against corruption, economic misery, and the Islamic Republic itself. The regime once again responded with force.

The world, once again, was silent.

2018: WATER PROTESTS 

Protests in 2018 in southern Iran for lack of water.

In 2018, Iranians protested against severe water shortages, environmental destruction, and government mismanagement. The regime’s forces again brutally confronted protesters. Even protests over something as basic as access to water became a deadly confrontation with the regime.

A crowd of demonstrators gathered during economic protests near the Grand Bazaar in Tehran, Iran, in June 2018. Also known as the Dey Protests, the unrest over rising food and commodity prices, high unemployment, and financial mismanagement spread rapidly to over 140 towns and cities in every province of Iran.

2019: BLOODY NOVEMBER 

After the government suddenly increased fuel prices, protests erupted throughout the country. The demonstrations about the price of gas quickly became an uprising against the Islamic Republic. The regime responded with extraordinary brutality. Security forces used live ammunition against protesters.

The exact death toll remains unclear but the message could not have been clearer: The regime was willing to kill its own people to remain in power.

Photos from Iran ‘Bloody November’ in 2019: The State Massacre Hidden by an Internet Blackout.

2022–2023:WOMEN, LIFE, FREEDOM   

Then came the murder of Mahsa Amini.

Her death in the custody of Iran’s “morality police” ignited one of the largest uprisings in the history of the Islamic Republic. Women removed their compulsory headscarves. Young people confronted security forces. Men and women stood together.

The world heard the cry: Woman. Life. Freedom.

The regime answered with bullets, executions, torture, imprisonment, and intimidation.

Hundreds were killed,

thousands injured, and

tens of thousands arrested.

Iranian women and men demonstrated extraordinary courage. Once again, they were left largely to fight alone.

Men and women protest against the killing of Mahsa Amini in Tehran, Iran. 28 September, 2022. (Photo: IMAGO / Zuma Wire via social media).

2025–2026: ANOTHER GENERATION RISES ( LION AND SUN REVOLUTION)

This year’s protests demonstrated once again that the Iranian people have not surrendered.

Following the bloodshed killing, a hundred thousand of peaceful protesters and repression surrounding the January 2026 protests, many Iranians inside and outside Iran looked to President Trump with hope that this time America might finally stand decisively with them. His promise that “Help is on the way” inspired the protestors but left them to be slaughtered alone.

When the United States and Israel weakened key components of the Islamic Republic’s military and security apparatus, many Iranians expressed gratitude and renewed hope. But tens of thousands had already been massacred. The massacres continue. How many times must the Iranian people be expected to walk into the streets unprotected just to be massacred with no help on the way.

They’ve been to this rodeo before. They know exactly what happens when they come into the streets without the means to defend themselves.

They remember 1979.

They remember 1988.

They remember 1999.

They remember 2009.

They remember 2019.

They remember 2022.

They remember January 2026.

They remember those who never came home.

2026 Iranian protests in Kashmar

So, when President Trump asks, “When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?”, please understand:

They already have.

The question is not whether Iranians are willing to fight.

The question is whether the free world is willing to stand with them when they do.

WHAT ARE IRANIANS REALLY WAITING FOR?

With hundreds of thousands slaughtered on the Islamic Republic’s evil alter, Iranians are waiting to know that America will not abandon them again.

They are waiting for the United States and its allies to listen to the Iranian people rather than relying on illegitimate voices and organizations that claim to represent them but do not.

They are waiting for Western leaders to understand that the Iranian people, not the Islamic Republic’s lobbyists, apologists, or carefully manufactured “opposition” figures, must determine the future of Iran.

They are waiting for the West to recognize the opposition that millions of Iranians themselves support, including Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, and to engage directly with those who have the support of the Iranian people.

And above all, they are waiting for a clear signal that America will not throw them under the bus once they rise. Again.

MR. PRESIDENT, GIVE THEM A REASON TO TRUST AMERICA

The Islamic Republic has repeatedly demonstrated that it will slaughter its own people to survive. America has the military power, intelligence, diplomatic influence, and international alliances to make it much more difficult for the regime to massacre peaceful protesters with impunity.

The Iranian people do not have those protections.

You have a security detail protecting you because your enemies – including the Islamic Republic – have repeatedly threatened your life and attempted to harm you.

Continuing to go into the streets in the face of these threats shows extraordinary courage. But even courage has limits when facing unrelenting brutality.

DO NOT ASK THEM TO FIGHT ALONE

When one asks “When the Iranian people to rise again?”, help create the conditions in which they can survive once they do. Prevent the regime from shutting down the internet and hiding massacres from the world.

Neutralize the forces deployed specifically to murder peaceful protesters.

Continue putting economic pressure on the regime and dismantling its ability to finance repression and terrorism.

And most importantly, listen directly to the Iranian people. Support the representatives whom the Iranian people themselves recognize. Do not allow the Islamic Republic’s lobbyists or regime-friendly intermediaries to tell you what Iranians want.

Listen to Iran’s streets.

Listen to the mothers who lost their children.

Listen to the fathers who buried their sons.

Listen to the women who removed their hijabs knowing they could be arrested.

Listen to the prisoners who survived torture.

Listen to the families still searching for the graves of the regime’s victims. It’s not hard to do. Iranians have been speaking for 47 years.

IRANIANS ARE NOT WAITING FOR A REVOLUTION – THEY ARE WAITING FOR VICTORY

The Islamic Republic wants the world to believe that Iranians are passive, divided, or unwilling to fight. That is a lie. The Iranian people have demonstrated their desire for freedom again and again.

What they have learned through decades of bloodshed is that courage alone is not enough. They need the free world to stand with them. They need to know that when they rise, America will not negotiate their future away, choosing appeasement over freedom.

They need to know that their sacrifice will not be forgotten.

The Iranian people are ready.

They have been ready for decades.

They are not asking America to fight their battle for them.

They are asking America not to prevent them from winning it.

They are asking for freedom to determine their own future. They are asking for the opportunity to reclaim the country that was stolen from them in 1979.

And they are asking America to stand on the right side of history.

So, when the President asks:

“When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?”,

my answer is simple:

They never stopped fighting.

And my question to you Mr. President is: Are you ready to make sure they do not have to fight and win alone?


About the writer:

Marziyeh (Marzi) Amirizadeh is an Iranian American author, public speaker, human rights advocate, and President of Newpersia.org. She has written two books “Captive in Iran,” and “A Love Journey with God” which are available on http://www.marzisjourney.com. She is an Iranian American who immigrated to the US after being sentenced to death by hanging in Iran for the crime of converting to Christianity. She endured months of mental and physical hardships and intense interrogation in Evin prison – one of the most brutal prisons in the world.









While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

THEY CAME, THEY BUILT, THEY LEFT – JEWS AND ZIMBABWE

How plausible is Matabeleland in present day Zimbabwe –formerly Rhodesia – of ever gaining independence?  How plausible is it for Jews to find genuine acceptance in Africa or anywhere else for that matter? Both questions were addressed – if not answered –  by the founding President of the Mthwakazi Republic Party (MRP) Mqondisi Moyo in a statement dated 22 August 2026 where in his quest for self-determination of the peoples of Mthwakazi,  laments the loss to  Zimbabwe of its Jewish community.
Unique amongst political leaders anywhere in the world today, Moyo’s core question throughout his statement is in the Matabeleland of the future:
 “How do we persuade the Jews to come back?”
See statement below and imagine a European leader asking the same question with any genuine sincerity.

David E. Kaplan
Editor Lay of the Land



ASK WHAT IS HAPPENING TO YOUR COUNTRY

Statement by Mqondisi Moyo

President, Mthwakazi Republic Party

Date: 22 August 2026

Jewish history in this land did not begin with Rhodesia.

Daniel Montague Kisch was in Lobengula’s kingdom in the early 1870s and served as an adviser to King Lobengula, two decades before the colonial state existed. Whatever else may be said about the relationship between Jews and this land, it did not arrive with settlers. It preceded them.

I begin there deliberately, because the rest of this history has too often been filed under somebody else’s story.

There were never many

At its height, the entire Jewish population of this country numbered just over seven thousand people. The national population was then approaching four million. Jews therefore accounted for about two people in every thousand. In Bulawayo, where Jewish life was strongest, the community reached a little more than three thousand at its peak.

And yet consider what they did.

The Bulawayo Hebrew Congregation was established in 1894. Jews became merchants, industrialists, doctors, dentists, lawyers, accountants, teachers and civic leaders. They established industries. They were prominent in furniture, farming and clothing. They employed people. They built businesses and institutions.

Bulawayo’s first mayor was Jewish. Isidore Hirschler took office on November 25, 1897, serving from 1897 to 1898. Several later mayors were Jewish. Bulawayo’s first newspaper  – The Matabele Times and Mining Journal – was owned and edited by a Jew – William Francis Wallenstein.

Rev. Moses Isaac Cohen, the spiritual leader of the Bulawayo Jewish community, helped shape the development of public education and served as a mediator in industrial disputes.

Jewish families built schools, synagogues, welfare organisations, sporting institutions, businesses and factories. They put down roots, raised families and helped build the place they called home.

Their numbers were tiny.

Their contribution was not.

We should be capable of saying that plainly.

We should also be capable of saying what follows.

I will not romanticise Rhodesia in order to honour them. The colonial order inflicted profound injustice on the indigenous peoples of this land. Honouring what Jewish families built here does not require anyone to forget conquest, racial discrimination or dispossession. A mature country must be capable of holding more than one truth at the same time. We can condemn the injustices of the colonial period. We can condemn the failures and abuses that followed it. We can recognise the ordinary human beings, including a very small Jewish minority, who nevertheless built lives, professions and institutions that became part of the fabric of this country.

There is a harder thing still, and I would rather say it myself than have somebody else say it for me.

In the 1930s, while Jews in Europe were searching desperately for countries willing to receive them, the authorities of Southern Rhodesia placed barriers in their way. People fleeing a catastrophe were treated as an immigration problem.

We know now where that catastrophe led.

There is something painful about remembering that from Bulawayo today. Governments here once asked how many Jews they should allow in.

I want the Matabeleland of the future to ask a different question.

How do we persuade them to come back?

Because we lost them.

Current community estimates suggest that only about eighty Jews remain in Zimbabwe. A community that had been here for more than a century, and that had contributed far beyond its size, has almost disappeared. Families whose names were part of the life of this city are now in South Africa, Israel, Britain, the United States, Australia and elsewhere.

I will not pretend every family left for the same reason. Political instability played its part. War played its part. Economic destruction played its part. Insecurity and uncertainty played their parts. At times there was hostility and antisemitic rhetoric as well. History is more complicated than a single cause – but the result is not complicated.

They are almost gone.

And here is what I want to say to my own people first, before I say anything to anybody else.

We understood that departure as a Jewish story. We treated it as a demographic fact about somebody else. That was a failure of comprehension, and it was ours.

The conditions that make a country unliveable for a small and historically vulnerable minority are usually conditions that will not remain confined to that minority. Scapegoating, arbitrary power, expropriation, lawlessness and the collapse of equal citizenship do not stop at the edge of a minority. What reaches the vulnerable first eventually reaches others.

The country did not decline because its Jews left. Their departure was instead evidence of pressures that would later become impossible for the wider society to ignore.

When Jews begin to ask whether their children have a future in a country, that country should treat the question as an early warning about the condition of its institutions.

We did not treat it that way. We should have.

I do not presume to lecture countries richer, older or more powerful than ours. I have no standing to do so and no intention of trying. I can only tell them what this looks like from the other side, because we have already made that mistake and we are still living inside the result.

We once had a small Jewish community here. We watched it become smaller. We treated that as a Jewish demographic fact.

Only later did we understand that the forces making them uncertain about their future were also damaging ours.

So when Jews begin asking whether their children have a future in your country, do not ask only what is happening to the Jews.

Ask what is happening to your country.

This is not only our history.

Baghdad once had a Jewish community numbered in the tens of thousands. So did Cairo and Alexandria. Jewish communities that had lived for centuries in Tripoli, Algiers and Sana’a are now shadows or memories. They left, fled or were expelled under differing combinations of persecution, dispossession, insecurity and political pressure. Their histories differ, and I do not pretend otherwise.

Governments should notice when an ancient minority concludes that it no longer has a future among them.

I speak about this as the leader of a people whose own mass killing by the state remains unresolved, whose dead still await full accounting, and whose history has too often been treated as an inconvenience to the national story. I do not compare our suffering with the Holocaust. I say only that we know something about what happens when a state decides that memory itself is negotiable.

If we are prepared to be honest about the failures of the past, we must be equally ambitious about the future.

We are trying to recover from decades of bad governance, economic decline and institutions that too often failed the people they were supposed to serve. We do not have the luxury of recreating those failures under a different flag.

A new country has one advantage that an old political system often does not. It can ask, from the beginning: What works?

We should look around the world without embarrassment. Where another country has found a better way to protect property, educate children, encourage enterprise, attract investment, develop technology, administer justice or protect minorities, we should study it. Where an institution works, we should learn from it. Mthwakazi should take the best ideas we can find and adapt them intelligently to our own circumstances.

Mthwakazi should not aspire merely to become another state. It should aspire to become an exceptionally well-governed one.

That is why I am prepared to say now, before we hold power, what a free Matabeleland will guarantee.

A movement that possesses no sovereign state can still declare in advance the terms on which it intends to govern. I would rather be held to a promise made in advance than praised for one made after the fact.

Equal citizenship. Irrespective of ethnicity, religion or language, as a founding constitutional principle and not a later amendment.

Equal protection of religious institutions. The synagogue, the church, the mosque and the traditional sacred place, protected on identical terms, without hierarchy among them.

Rejection of scapegoating. A free Matabeleland will not tolerate the scapegoating of any community for the failures of the state. That includes antisemitism in all its forms, whether expressed as religious hatred or ethnic hostility, or repackaged for political convenience — because a country that permits hatred of its smallest community has already begun permitting hatred of everybody else.

Equal application of self-determination. Mthwakazi cannot demand recognition for itself while declaring the national self-determination of any other people uniquely illegitimate. A standard that applies to us must apply to everybody, and a standard that excludes one people alone is not a standard. It is a prejudice with paperwork.

Heritage and reconnection. The future state will establish a facilitated pathway to residence and citizenship for descendants of families with a documented historic connection to Matabeleland who wish to re-establish that connection, including descendants of the historic Jewish communities of Bulawayo and Matabeleland.

Nobody should have to be ethnically Ndebele to belong fully to Matabeleland.

Nobody should have to belong to the majority religion.

Nobody should have to surrender his history, her language, their faith or their identity in exchange for acceptance.

A Jewish child growing up in Bulawayo should be able to say, without qualification: this is my country too.

That is the standard. A future Matabeleland cannot demand justice for the Mthwakazi people while withholding it from anybody else. That would not be liberation. It would merely change who holds the power to exclude.

Today we possess no sovereign state, no national army, no treasury, no diplomatic service and no seat at the United Nations. But precisely because we are asking the world to judge whether we are capable of statehood, we should say in advance what we intend to do with state power if it is ever entrusted to us.

We intend to use it to protect belonging, not ration it.

I will go further, because a principle that costs nothing is not a principle.

A sovereign Matabeleland will establish full and resident diplomatic relations with the State of Israel from the beginning of its independence, and will apply to the Jewish people the same principle of national self-determination it claims for the people of Mthwakazi.

We do not make that commitment because we expect anything in return. We make it because one standard must mean one standard. A people asking the world to recognise its right to self-determination cannot ask the world to suspend that principle for somebody else.

Departure can tell a country something about itself. Return can tell it something too.

If one day Jewish families who left this country decide that their children once again have a future here, I will regard that not as a favour they have done for us, but as evidence that we have succeeded in changing what this country is.

It will tell us that we have begun to get the country right.

Now the part I have been building toward.

To the Jews whose grandparents lived in Bulawayo. To the families who remember the streets, schools, shops, synagogues and homes of this city. To those now living in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Tel Aviv, London, New York, Sydney and elsewhere.

Come home.

Come and see the city your families helped build. Come and show your children where their grandparents lived. And if we succeed in creating the free, democratic and lawful Matabeleland for which we struggle, come and consider building here again.

We ask you to return because you belong to this history.

We ask you to return because your departure diminished us.

We ask you to return because the country we intend to build must be one in which a small minority never again has to wonder whether there is a place for it.

Bring your children. Bring your traditions. Reopen institutions. Create new ones. Pray here if you wish. Build here if you wish. Teach here. Work here. Retire here. Raise your families here. Or simply come because this was once your family’s home and you wish to make it home again.

We will protect your synagogue as we protect the church, the mosque and the traditional sacred place.

We will protect your property because the law protects everyone’s property.

We will protect your freedom of worship because religious liberty belongs to everyone.

We will protect your equality because citizens do not require the permission of a majority to belong.

If that requires us to humble ourselves before families who once concluded that their future could no longer be here, then we should humble ourselves. If we must ask them to trust us again, then we should ask.

A country’s greatness is not measured by how powerful its majority becomes.

It is measured by how safe its smallest minority feels.

It is measured by whether people want to stay.

It is measured by whether those who left would ever trust us enough to return.

Come home.

Not to the country as it was.

Come home to the country we have learned that we must become.

A free country. A democratic country. A country governed by law. A country secure enough in its own identity that it has no reason to fear anybody else’s.

That is the Matabeleland worth fighting for.

That is the Matabeleland I hope will one day be worthy of welcoming its Jews home.






About the writer:

*Mqondisi Moyo* is the founding President of the Mthwakazi Republic Party (MRP), which was formally launched in Bulawayo on 11 January 2014. Born in 1978 and raised at Gwandavale in Matobo, Moyo has spent more than a decade advocating for the political rights and self-determination of the peoples of Mthwakazi. He contested the Matobo North parliamentary constituency as the MRP candidate in Zimbabwe’s 2018 elections. Under his leadership, the MRP pursues the peaceful, democratic and internationally recognized restoration of Mthwakazi and has campaigned on Gukurahundi accountability, political and economic marginalization, cultural and language rights, migration, and regional and international engagement. Moyo advocates resolving Mthwakazi’s political status through lawful and nonviolent means.






While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

ELUL, REPENTANCE AND FORGIVENESS

Elul reminds us that repentance is not only about regret for past shortcomings but choosing a better direction for the future.

By Jonathan Feldstein

We are almost half way through the Biblical month of Elul during which Jewish communities around the world enter a sacred season of prayerful reflection. Elul is the time of cheshbon nefesh, the mother of all soul searching, an honest accounting before God. It is a season of repentance, of examining motives in our own hearts. Closely connected to repentance is forgiveness, and for both of which at this season there is a systematic approach.

Just as some couples might mark a significant anniversary with a renewal of their wedding vows, we turn to God annually to renew our commitment to Him with deep sincerity and actions. Part of that reverence for God is also a commitment to repair relations between people. We cannot revere Him, and be thoughtless or insensitive to one another with impunity. During Elul, the shofar is sounded each morning as a vivid wake-up call, reminding us to awaken and prepare for the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah – the New Year – and Yom Kippur – the Day of Repentance.

I wish you could hear the shofar outside my window each morning, from nearby synagogues and the balconies of people’s homes. It’s spiritually stirring and essential. Every day. It’s like a snooze button on an alarm clock that you can’t turn off, and shouldn’t want to.

This ancient rhythm of introspection and repentance speaks powerfully to us in many ways. Scripture calls us to examine ourselves, to repent, and to realign our lives with the purposes of God. In this season, we dig deep about not only what needs repair in our private lives, but also what faithfulness looks like toward one another personally, and toward God.

We can and should renew that at least annually. Through prayer, introspection, and action.

The interrelated theme of forgiveness also is actively present as we make a proactive commitment as part of the soul searching to assess who we might have harmed over the previous year, apologize, and seek their forgiveness. I am approached by Christian friends frequently to understand Jewish concepts. Recently forgiveness has been one of the more common themes. Forgiveness is a unique concept in Judaism and Christianity, yet Jews and Christians approach forgiveness differently. In Judaism, especially at this season, the obligation is to do a soul searching and ask for forgiveness. There’s a general notion that forgiveness is not to be dispensed like a product from a vending machine, but actively sought out with sincerity.

Three years ago, a rabbi friend shared with me words that have stayed with me since. “To ask for forgiveness involves a bit of embarrassment, a humbling of one’s ego, a recognition of the frailty of the human condition; so it pains us, but we do it, eventually. But this experience pales in comparison to the final level of forgiveness, bestowing it! Asking for forgiveness involves one set of character traits, using one’s ‘humility muscles’; giving forgiveness on the other hand involves a whole other area of human nature compassion, love, and respect.”

More succinctly, the simple truism “To err is human; to forgive, divine” is the rudder for this process this season. When there is a sincere plea for forgiveness, our response can be divine in nature, or it can be very human. It’s up to us.

Both traditions offer profound teachings on mercy, repentance, and reconciliation rooted in Torah, the Prophets, the Gospels, and centuries of interpretation. But many questions, nuances, and differences exist. How do Jewish concepts like teshuvah and divine pardon relate to Christian ideas of grace and atonement? How do we approach forgiveness from our respective traditions on an individual basis, and in relation to God? Where do the traditions converge, and where do they diverge in theology and in practice? As we enter the High Holiday season, on August 27 there will be a deep, honest, and thoughtful conversation on the Inspiration from Zion webinar series doing a deep dive into Jewish and Christian perspectives on forgiveness. Registration is free.

I look at this overall topic definitely from the perspective of creating understanding, but I also think these are the cornerstones of what make me a better Jew and human being. There are specific Jewish customs that make the idea of forgiveness universal which make the topic relevant to us all whether we are specifically mindful of these during this season, or anytime.

As an overall theme, ideas surrounding forgiveness come up a lot in my regular engagement with Christians. But this year there was one unsettling experience, a message I received from a Pastor I used to respect and with whom I had not been in touch for many years after he did something terrible to me, the ripple effect of which I still feel. Out of the blue he wrote:

 “There is so much I need to share with you including a long overdue apology for horrible act of selfishness from many years ago I have never forgotten that cruel act that I have to confess to you and seek your forgiveness.”

Albeit without the details and context here, I will look forward to use this to illustrate the conversation, my response, and about which I will make myself vulnerable to open evaluation by the rabbi and pastor who will represent their respective traditions. Was his appeal to me sincere?

Should I have forgiven him?

Given him a hearing?

I’m interested in what the rabbi and pastor have to say.

Elul reminds us that repentance is not only about regret for past shortcomings. It is about choosing a better direction for the future. Both on a personal level and vis-à-vis God, forgiveness and repentance must be cornerstones of doing so. One might ask more than rhetorically what might appear to be a chicken and egg question of which comes first, or in this case which is the foundation for the other: can there be repentance without forgiveness or forgiveness without repentance.

None of us are perfect and I stand as personal testimony to that. If I am being honest, I need to acknowledge my shortcomings interpersonally and to and in relation to God. If I am being honest, I should dub myself King of the Imperfect because this season is about me and my behaviors, not about or judging others.

The alarm clock is sounding. Sounding the shofar each day is a good literal and figurative wake up call for each of us. Let me give you one.

Whether in personal prayer and introspection, or part of an important interfaith dialogue to explore the parameters, if only once a year this is a good time to take personal accounting of one’s behaviors and even if we don’t come out of it perfect, at least not to make the same mistakes again in the coming year.



About the writer:

Jonathan Feldstein ­­­­- President of the US based non-profit Genesis123 Foundation whose mission is to build bridges between Jews and Christians – is a freelance writer whose articles appear in The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Townhall, NorthJersey.com, Algemeiner Journal, The Jewish Press, major Christian websites and more.







While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

AMERICA, BEWARE OF THE ISLAMISTS IN YOUR BACKYARD

What I see is what I fear: How can American’s be so blind?

By Marziyeh Amirizadeh

Becoming an American citizen ten years ago was one of the most exciting and proud days in my life.  It was not simply because I had fled Iran – the country of my birth – where, after becoming a Christian in 1999 I was arrested and sentenced to death for the “crime” of apostacy. Indeed, the ability to live as a Christian without daily fears of arrest or persecution, much less torture and death was life changing. I was also able to vote in a free and democratic election for the first time in my life. It’s impossible for most Americans to imagine not having the freedoms so cherished for us all– and for which Iranians are struggling and dying in order to gain their freedom from the oppression of the Islamic Republic – and being so foreign and unimaginable for me just years earlier as I sat on death row in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison.

Often, as an American who was able to flee tyranny, I feel that I cherish America’s freedom’s more than those who were born here and take them for granted. I understand more than most what lack of freedom looks like in an entire country, and for the citizens living under the oppression of Islamic Sharia law.

I don’t dismiss the things that are talking points of American elections, not at all. But for so many Americans living with the freedoms that we have, far too many do not appreciate what they mean. When it comes to women’s rights, of course I stand for that in the American way of thinking. But sometimes I shake my head because I know what it’s really like to live in a society in which misogyny and subjugation of women is in its DNA. I know what it’s like to see women manipulated to become sex workers under the guise of a perverse and institutionally sanctioned Islamic formula of “temporary marriage.”

I know what it’s like to fear being beaten or abused because of not wearing the mandatory hijab “properly,” or to wear makeup, pluck one’s eyebrows, or have nail polish. I know what it’s like to see women brutally tortured, their faces deliberately disfigured and teeth knocked out because in Islam a woman’s life is only worth half of that of a man.

I know what women face daily by way of sexual harassment, assault, and rape both in prison and on the streets. I know that the Islamists are so evil that even before executing women on a variety of trumped-up charges like my best friend Shirin Alamhooli – as I would have been had God not spared me – they rape virgin women and girls to prevent them from going to heaven. No matter how many times you read that sentence, it will never be normal, humane, or tolerable in any way.

Iranian Injustice. This photo of Shirin Alamhooli was taken by the writer while in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. Shiran was executed on May 9, 2010. (Photo: Marziyeh Amirizadeh)

I even know what it’s like for a brother to tell me after I became a Christian, an Islamic cleric told him to kill me for shaming the family and insulting Islam, and that he would be protected from any legal repercussions. All these and many other ways women suffer in Iran, and under Islam generally, are due to the evils of Sharia law that imposes itself on women, and any non-Muslim, in countless ways.

As a grateful and proud American, I weep as I see a trend happening in the United States that echoes the naïve ignorance that paved the way for the rise of the Islamists in the country of my birth. More than the ignorance of those who protested to bring down the Shah, often what’s known as the Red-Green alliance of Marxists and communists collaborating with the Islamists, Americans are actually electing the Islamists through democratic voting that has been hijacked.

When I see Abdul El Sayid as the Democratic candidate for Senator in Michigan, I see the interrogators and judges I faced and argued with. They repeatedly tried to entrap me and convince me to reject and renounce my faith in Jesus, claiming that I would be forgiven and set free. But I knew the truth that there was no compromise with these evil people and no matter what I did they would still execute me.

The New Left. Abdul El-Sayed, the anti-Israel Democratic candidate who won the Michigan Senate primary, has called the idea of Jewish state “illiberal”,  and said money is only reason Dems who ‘believe in human rights’ support Israel. (Photo: AP/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

When I see Ilhan Omar who manipulates American freedom to impose radical Islam in Congress, and become rich in schemes that she and her husband/brother are alleged to have concocted, I see the hijab covered women of the Iranian Revolution era, who with their stupidity and self-righteous adherence to Islam, ushered in a society that made them worth only half of their brothers and husbands.

Menacing Mindset. Already back in 2012,Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s views were clear when she tweeted “Israel has hypnotized the world”, invoking an old anti-Semitic trope of Jews controlling world events through some sort of mystical power.

When I see Iranian-American Yassamin Ansari serving in Congress representing Arizona’s 3rd District, I see the fake reformists within Iranian society and those who have been exported by the Islamic regime in order to infiltrate Western society. She makes her handlers at NIAC happy, but turns the stomach of average Iranians who want to see freedom from everything she represents.

Climate Change. Climate policy advocate U.S. Representative Yassamin Ansari of Arizona has shifted from her initial position as a self-described “pro-Israel progressive” to sharply criticizing Israel’s military campaigns, describing actions in Gaza and Lebanon as “genocide” and “mass atrocities”, and stating she will block offensive military aid.

When I see Adam Hamaway in New Jersey, I see the professionals of Iran who colluded with the Islamic regime to protect themselves and their livelihoods, empowering and enabling the ayatollahs out of fear, or their own conversion to radical Islam. How an Islamist who was an aid to the “blind Sheikh” associated with the World Trade Center bombing could stand for congress in a district just 50 miles from where Islamists brought down the World Trade Center 25 years ago is unthinkable. How can Americans be so blind?

Dr. No. Prior to his win in the Democratic primary for New Jersey’s12th congressional district, Dr. Adam Hamawy appeared on the Hasan Piker’s show (noted for its antisemitic rhetoric) saying NO to supporting Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system because it is “insulating Israel” from “having to deal with the consequences of war.” 

When I see Ghazala Hashmi as Lt. Governor of Virginia, I see the slavery that has been imposed by Islam over much of the non-Arab world – including the country of her birth – by the steady and deliberate Islamic conquest. Islamists will conquer city by city and state by state, through violent jihad where necessary, or under the stealth manipulation of freedom in the country that they are trying to conquer.

Troubling Triumvirate. Gunning for Israel are (l-r) Zohran Mamdani, Rashida Harbi Tlaib Right and Ghazala Hashmi (Photo: X)

When I see Zohran Mamdani, an unapologetic Islamist extremist as mayor of America’s largest city and financial capital, I see the radical Mahmoud Ahmadiinijad who served as mayor of Tehran before becoming President of Iran, under whom I experienced and witnessed the regime’s savage brutality while in prison. God help us if this is not the beginning and final stop of Mamdani’s political career.

Suspect Priorities. What is the true agenda of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani whose first day in office, revoked the City’s recognition of IHRA – the gold standard definition of antisemitism – sending a strong message in word and deed that he is hostile to Israel and a danger to the local Jewish community?  (Photo: Angela Weiss / AFP)

When I see hundreds of Democratic leaders pandering to the Islamists, I see leftist Iranian civilians who protested against the Shah and ushered in the Ayatollah’s regime in 1979 before being arrested, imprisoned, tortured, executed, or exiled by their former poster child Ayatollah Khomeini and his Islamist backers. It didn’t take long before the Islamists’ true colors were clear, and how the leftists who had been manipulated as the useful idiots they had become became evident and unstoppable.

I love the country of my birth and pray that all Iranians will be free from the heel of Islamic brutality soon. I also love my adopted country, the United States, and the freedoms that we all cherish. But I fear that Americans do not see the threat that’s already in our back yard, and will continue to elevate, enable, and elect Islamists like these and others, and end up seeing our cherished America becoming like the country of my birth. 

One Islamic Republic is one too many. We do not ever want that here. America, please do not be fooled, and please do not vote for any of these Islamists or their enablers. Heaven help us all.



About the writer:

Marziyeh (Marzi) Amirizadeh, the founder and president of www.newpersia.org, an author, public speaker, and activist. She has written two books “Captive in Iran,” and “A Love Journey with God” which are available on www.marzisjourney.com. She is an Iranian American who immigrated to the US after being sentenced to death by hanging in Iran for the crime of converting to Christianity. She endured months of mental and physical hardships and intense interrogation in Evin prison- one of the most brutal prisons in the world.









While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

MENSCHESKEIT, MITZVOT AND THE JEWISH SOUL IN TIMES OF WAR

A sensitive reflection on Jewish ethics, Derech Eretz, preserving life, and how living by Torah values can help protect mental health even in times of conflict.

By Bev Moss-Reilly

There is something deeply rooted in Jewish life that goes beyond law, ritual, or identity alone. It is menscheskeit, that instinctive decency, compassion, and moral accountability that shapes how a Jew is meant to move through the world. It is expressed through mitzvot, through Derech Eretz, and through the understanding that power must never cancel conscience. In times of conflict, when grief, fear, and rage can easily consume the human spirit, these values matter even more. They remind us that to be Jewish is not only to survive, but to remain anchored in holiness, restraint, and compassion.

The Torah teaches that every human being is created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, and that life itself begins with divine breath. In Bereishit (Book of Genesis), Hashem breathes the breath of life into the human being, and the Talmud teaches that saving a single life is as if one has saved an entire world. These are not abstract ideas. They form the moral architecture of Jewish consciousness. They tell us that a Neshama is never trivial, never ownerless, and never outside the concern of Heaven. When Jews speak about life as sacred, it is because we believe that the soul within a person is entrusted by Hashem and ultimately belongs to Hashem – that we feed our Neshama to afford us a place in Olam Habah (the world to come).

That belief has consequences. It means that even in war, even under unbearable provocation, even when facing an enemy, the Jewish moral instinct is not meant to delight in cruelty or become casual about suffering. Jewish ethics calls on us not to stand idly by the blood of another, and to love our neighbour as ourselves. It also demands that we do not allow pain to turn us into people who no longer recognise the humanity of others. This does not mean abandoning self-defence. It does not mean becoming passive in the face of terror. It means that defence must still be held within a moral framework, because the soul of a people is tested not only by how it suffers, but by how it behaves when it has the strength to act.

International humanitarian law reflects some of these same moral instincts. It prohibits attacks directed at civilians and requires effective advance warning of attacks that may affect civilians when circumstances permit. Whatever political arguments may rage around any specific conflict, the underlying principle is clear, civilians are not to be the object of attack, and precautions matter. For many Jews, that principle does not feel foreign. It resonates with a Torah shaped conscience that recoils from the deliberate targeting of innocents and insists that even necessary force must never become moral carelessness.

This is also why so many Jews feel deeply moved by examples of medical care given across lines of hostility. Israeli official sources have documented the coordination of medical aid and field hospitals for Gazan civilians, and Israeli hospitals have long described treating Palestinians and even patients from adversarial states. These moments matter far beyond public relations or politics. They express something enduring in Jewish moral life, namely that saving a life is not cancelled by enmity. When an injured person is treated, stabilised, or comforted, even if they come from the other side of a conflict, a line is being drawn in favour of life. A statement is being made that our values do not evaporate under pressure.

Driving across the Divide. Prior to the October 7 massacre in southern Israel, around 2,700 Palestinian patients were driven to Israeli hospitals every year by members of the ‘Road to Recovery’ group, breaking physical and language barriers. Seen here was Adam Abu al-Rob, a six-year-old Palestinian eye cancer patient, siting with his father Mamoun in a vehicle driven by Israeli ‘Road to Recovery’ volunteer Yael Noy. (Photo: Jack Guez/AFP)

From a mental health perspective, this matters profoundly. War always leaves emotional scars. There is fear, anticipatory dread, helplessness, grief, and often deep exhaustion. But another burden can enter as well, moral injury. Moral injury occurs when a person feels that a deep moral line has been crossed, whether by what they did, what they witnessed, or what they failed to prevent. It is associated with guilt, shame, disgust, anger, and severe psychological distress. When people feel they have betrayed their deepest values, the inner toll can be devastating. By contrast, acting in ways that remain aligned with conscience, compassion, and restraint may help protect the inner life, even when pain remains. That is an inference, but it is a meaningful one. If violating one’s moral core can wound the psyche, then remaining faithful to that core can help preserve it.

There is research too showing that helping others can reduce stress and improve mood, self-esteem, happiness, and a sense of connection. Kindness does not erase trauma, and compassion does not make war emotionally easy. But it can interrupt the hardening of the heart. It can protect people from becoming consumed by hatred. It can remind them, even in crisis, that they are still capable of good. In that sense, living by Torah values is not only spiritually elevating, but it can also be psychologically protective. It gives suffering meaning, keeps cruelty from colonising the soul, and creates a moral continuity between belief and action.

This is where Derech Eretz becomes more than a beautiful phrase. It becomes an emotional stabiliser. To act with dignity, to show mercy, to preserve life where possible, to warn civilians, to treat the wounded, and to refuse to surrender one’s humanity, these are not signs of weakness. They are signs of spiritual strength. They say that even under siege, even after trauma, even when the heart is broken, the Jewish people are still answerable to something higher than rage.

That does not mean Jews do not suffer. Of course we do. It does not mean Jews are not traumatised by terror, by war, by loss, by hostage crises, or by the constant psychological strain of living under threat. We are. When a people continue to act from mitzvot, from compassion, and from the awareness that every Neshama comes from Hashem, something important is preserved. The body may be exhausted, the heart may ache, and the mind may still need support, but the soul is less fractured when it has not betrayed itself.

Perhaps that is one of the deepest forms of Jewish resilience. Not merely surviving but surviving without letting brutality define us. Not merely fighting but fighting without worshipping force. Not merely mourning our own but recognising the sacredness of life itself. In that lies both holiness and protection. Because when Jews live by Torah, honour the Neshama, and save life wherever they can, they do not only help the other. They help guard their own inner world as well.



About the writer:

Bev Moss -Reilly is a Jewish freelance content writer living in South Africa with a deep and heartfelt focus on mental health, emotional wellbeing, trauma, grief, and the unseen struggles people carry every day. Through her writing and her Mental Health Packs, she aims to bring comfort, awareness, compassion, and practical support to individuals, families, workplaces, and communities. Her work is rooted in empathy, dignity, and the belief that nobody should feel alone in their pain, especially in times of crisis.








While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

WORN DOWN BY WAR

A Jewish perspective of ‘anticipatory grief’, loss and mental health during war.

By Bev Moss-Reilly

(*To assist readers, a glossary appears at the end of the article)

War wounds people long before the final phone call, the funeral, the shattered building, or the unbearable silence. One of its deepest cruelties is anticipatory grief, that aching state of living in fear of loss before the loss is even confirmed. It is the dread that sits in the chest when a loved one is at the front, when a child is missing, when a siren sounds, when a family waits for news, when a mother keeps checking her phone, or when an elderly father looks at the door and wonders who will walk through it next.

It is grief in advance, and it is exhausting.

Anticipatory grief affects mental health profoundly. It keeps the nervous system on constant alert. People struggle to sleep, eat, think clearly, or regulate their emotions. The body remains tense, braced for impact. Anxiety and helplessness grow. So does guilt. People feel guilty for being safe when others are not, guilty for carrying on, guilty for moments of laughter, guilty for not having done more. In war, the mind rarely gets to rest. Even when tragedy has not yet struck, the soul is already trembling.

Then, when loss does come, it often arrives in layers. War does not only take one thing. It can strip a person of home, family, routine, livelihood, identity, faith in the world, bodily safety, and the simple expectation that tomorrow will look like today. This is why grief in wartime is not only about death, although death is devastating enough. It is also about every other form of loss that leaves a person disoriented, raw, and altered.

PHYSICAL LOSS

 A person may lose a limb, mobility, eyesight, hearing, strength, or independence. A child may lose the sense of safety that once came from being held by a parent in a familiar room. A family may lose a house filled with photographs, books, toys, mezuzot, candlesticks, wedding gifts, kiddush cups, and all the ordinary holy clutter of Jewish life. Possessions are not merely objects. They hold memory, tradition, continuity, and meaning. When they are gone, part of a person’s story can feel erased.

EMOTIONAL LOSS

People lose trust. They lose innocence. They lose the emotional energy required to keep showing up in the same way. They lose the version of themselves that existed before trauma. Some lose the ability to cry. Others cannot stop crying. Some become numb. Some become irritable, angry, frightened, withdrawn, or hypervigilant. Mental health in these moments is not a neat or tidy thing. It is often about survival. It is getting through the next hour, the next night, the next funeral, the next alert, the next memory.

SPIRITUAL LOSS

This can be especially painful because it is often invisible. War can shake a person’s relationship with Hashem, with prayer, with community, and even with meaning itself. Someone may ask, “Where was God?” Another may feel unable to daven. Someone else may go through the motions while feeling empty inside. Others may feel their emunah deepen, not because they understand suffering, but because faith becomes the only place left to stand. Spiritual grief is real grief. It is the mourning of certainty, of order, of the feeling that the world makes sense.

In Jewish life, however, grief is never meant to be carried alone. This is one of the great strengths of our tradition. Judaism does not deny pain, rush mourning, or ask people to be strong in a performative way. It creates structure around sorrow. It gives the mourner something solid when everything else feels unsteady.

When someone dies, Jewish mourning practices provide an emotional and spiritual container. Sitting shiva is one of the most compassionate responses to grief imaginable. The mourner does not have to host, perform, or explain. The community comes. People bring food. They sit low. They share silence. They tell stories. They cry. They pray. They remember. There is no pressure to be polished. Grief is allowed to be visible. It is witnessed. There is no timeline and it’s not linear, neither is it expected to be. That matters enormously for mental health.

Shiva says to the mourner, “You are not abandoned in this pain.” It acknowledges that loss is not something to “move on” from quickly. It slows life down and lets the heart catch up with reality. Shloshim continues that process, recognising that mourning does not end after one week. The rhythms of aveilut honour the fact that the soul needs time. In a world that often demands productivity and emotional suppression, Judaism insists on presence, tenderness, and community.

This is not incidental. It is the essence of emotional support. In many ways, it is the essence of mental health. To be held by others, to be seen, to have meals arrive without asking, to hear Tehillim being said, to be surrounded by people who understand the sacredness of memory, this is not small comfort. It can be life preserving.

SHAPING SURVIVAL

Jewish tradition also understands that grief belongs not only to the individual, but to the collective. We are a people shaped by memory, by exile, by destruction, by rebuilding, by mourning, and by survival. We know what it means to carry names, stories, and absences across generations. That collective memory can be heavy, but it can also be deeply connecting. Jews inherently know how to show up because we have inherited the language of showing up. Nichum aveilim, comforting mourners, is not an abstract value. It is lived chesed. It is practical love.

During war, that support becomes even more vital. Not everyone is mourning a death. Some are mourning a son who returned from battle alive but changed. Some are grieving a daughter who lost her home. Some are living with the anguish of a hostage situation, not knowing whether to hope or prepare their hearts to break. Some are mourning the loss of livelihood, community, safety, or country. Some are grieving while still in danger, which means there is no neat beginning, middle, or end to the process.

That is why compassion matters so much. People living through wartime grief may not look “grief stricken” in the expected way. They may be functioning, making meals, going to work, caring for children, even laughing at times. But beneath that, they may be carrying terror, heartbreak, and spiritual fatigue. We need to be gentle with one another. We need to understand that trauma and grief can coexist with faith, resilience, and even moments of gratitude.

The Jewish way does not promise that grief will disappear. It offers something truer. It teaches that sorrow can be honoured, shared, ritualised, and held with dignity. It teaches that broken hearts still belong in community. It teaches that when a person cannot stand alone, Am Yisrael stands with them.

In wartime, anticipatory grief, loss, and bereavement can shake mental health to its core. Jewish tradition reminds us that comfort is not found only in answers. Often it is found in presence, prayer, remembrance, community, and love. In the candle lit for a soul. In the hand on a shoulder. In the meal left at the door. In the whispered words, “HaMakom yenachem etchem.” In the quiet, enduring truth that even in unbearable loss, no Jew should ever have to mourn alone.

For when one Jew feels pain, every Jew feels pain, and in that shared sorrow lies the quiet, enduring strength of our people.



Glossary of Hebrew Words and Expressions:

Hashem
Literally “The Name.” A reverent way of referring to G-d.

Shiva
The first seven days of mourning after the burial of a close family member. During this time, mourners remain at home and are supported by family, friends, and community.
Note: “sitting sheva” is commonly intended to mean “sitting shiva.”

Shloshim
The thirty-day mourning period following burial. It includes the first seven days of shiva and continues as a gentler, extended phase of mourning.

Aveilut
Jewish mourning practices and the broader laws and customs of bereavement.

Daven
To pray.

Emunah
Faith, trust, or deep spiritual belief, especially in G-d.

Tehillim
Psalms. These are often recited in times of sorrow, danger, illness, or communal need.

Nichum Aveilim
Comforting mourners. This is considered a deeply important mitzvah, or sacred obligation, in Jewish life.

Chesed
Loving kindness, compassion, and acts of generosity or care toward others.

Am Yisrael
The people of Israel, or the Jewish people as a collective.

HaMakom Yenachem Etchem
A traditional phrase said to mourners, meaning:
“May the Omnipresent comfort you.”
It is part of the fuller condolence expression used during mourning.

Mezuzot
Plural of mezuzah. Small parchment scrolls containing sacred verses, placed in a case and attached to the doorposts of Jewish homes.

Kiddush Cup
A ceremonial cup used when reciting Kiddush, the blessing over wine, usually for Shabbat and festivals.




About the writer:

Bev Moss -Reilly is a Jewish freelance content writer living in South Africa with a deep and heartfelt focus on mental health, emotional wellbeing, trauma, grief, and the unseen struggles people carry every day. Through her writing and her Mental Health Packs, she aims to bring comfort, awareness, compassion, and practical support to individuals, families, workplaces, and communities. Her work is rooted in empathy, dignity, and the belief that nobody should feel alone in their pain, especially in times of crisis.









While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).