How Donald Trump Will Divide American and Israeli Jews

American presidents like Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump are bad for relations between Israel and Jews in the United States. They lay bare the fact that American Jews and Israeli Jews have different sets of priorities and values. These presidents underline the understandable, if unfortunate, reality that Jewish Americans prioritize Israel quite low as they vote — and that Jewish Israelis do not care about the political sensitivities of American Jews.

.. Israel knows that Jewish Americans are wary of certain leaders of the evangelical religious right, and yet accept their political support without many reservations.

Tied Up in Knots Over a Goring Ox

In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi,’ the Talmud tries to make sense of an incoherent Biblical law about awarding damages

.. According to Exodus, an ox that kills a human being is to be stoned to death immediately; yet it is only after goring three times that the ox earns the designation “forewarned.” How, then, could any ox ever be forewarned, when it wouldn’t live long enough to kill three times? As the Gemara says in Bava Kamma 41a, “How can you find a forewarned ox?” One straightforward answer to this question would be that the Bible is incoherent on this point, that it simply did not think things through. But of course such an answer is unavailable to the rabbis, who are fairly free in elaborating and revising the Bible, but never simply criticize or repudiate it.

.. An ox, the Mishna says, can be “forewarned with regard to Shabbatot”: That is, an ox that has a habit of goring on Shabbat would not be considered forewarned for goring on a weekday. This distinction initially seems to make no sense—surely an ox doesn’t keep track of the calendar, so how could the distinction between Shabbat and weekday be meaningful to it? According to the Jerusalem Talmud, the Koren edition notes the reason is that people wear different clothes on Shabbat, which might confuse the ox, leading it to gore people it perceives as strangers.

..  This dynamic is one reason the process of interpreting and codifying Jewish law is open-ended: The Talmud is not the end of argument, but the beginning.

Attacked by Trump, Mexicans look to Jewish groups for help

The Mexican community needs to polish its image to the point that “there has to be some sort of cost if you attack Mexico or Mexican Americans,” added Siegel Vann, who is Mexican-American and Jewish. “The moment that there’s attacks, that Mexicans are called rapists, there has to be some sort of national outrage.”

.. “Those who want to make a political profit stigmatizing these people, be [they] Mexican, Jews, Muslims, people of color, Asians are wrong for this country was founded on the very principle, the self-evident truth that all men and women are endowed with the same unalienable rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” she said.

.. In March, a group of business leaders set up the American Mexico Public Affairs Committee to lobby lawmakers and educate U.S. voters about the two countries’ relationship. The group is modeling itself after AIPAC

.. American Jews have a long history of political activism, especially on civil liberties, and Jewish organizations have been at the forefront of condemning Trump for his many comments about Mexicans, Muslims and other minorities.

.. He then joked that a plane buzzing overhead could be from Mexico and “getting ready to attack.” He also gave a backhanded compliment to Mexicans, saying: “I respect their leaders. What they’ve done to us is incredible. Their leaders are so much smarter, so much sharper.”