Showing posts with label Jewish ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jewish ethics. Show all posts

Thursday, October 23, 2025




Every political movement faces moments that reveal what it truly values. The Graham Platner affair in Maine is one of those moments, not because of its particular sordidness, but because of what the response reveals about how political actors actually weigh competing values against each other.

The facts are straightforward:. A Senate candidate backed by Bernie Sanders has an SS Totenkopf tattoo on his chest. He claims he got it drunk in Croatia in 2007 without understanding its meaning, yet acquaintance says Platner explained the Nazi connection to him in 2012. His former political director resigned, calling the tattoo antisemitic and warning Democrats against being "painfully stupid." Yet Sanders deflects, asking whether we care more about a tattoo or healthcare policy. The online left has made supporting Platner a litmus test.

I have been arguing in my ethics articles that values are real - a part of our very beings. Every human issue can be looked at through the lens of what our values are and how we prioritize them. In this case, we are seeing how the Democratic Party is prioritizing its values.

Power is a value in politics, though not a moral value. It is an instrumental value. You cannot enact healthcare reform from the minority. You cannot confirm judges without winning elections.  Power enables the pursuit of substantive goals. 

But instrumental values must be weighed against moral values. Every political actor does this constantly. It cannot be avoided - but it must be transparent.

The Democratic response to Platner fails badly. Rather than acknowledging the tradeoff, party leaders pretend there is no tradeoff to make. Sanders reframes the question as though caring about antisemitism and caring about healthcare are mutually exclusive. DNC chairman Ken Martin calls the social media posts "not right" but "not disqualifying," as though those categories exhaust the possibilities. Representative Ro Khanna invokes the principle of not engaging in personal destruction "especially in our own party," with that final clause doing all the work.

What would honesty look like here? It would sound something like this: "We believe Senator Collins must be defeated in 2026. We believe the policies we would enact with that Senate seat matter enormously. We have concluded that despite serious concerns about this candidate's judgment and character, the instrumental value of winning this seat outweighs those concerns." One might disagree with that calculation, but at least it would be a real argument about real tradeoffs.

Why don't the Democrats do that? Because they would essentially be saying that they prioritize power over principles, which is not something most voters want to hear. 

Supporting Platner means accepting that someone who wore Nazi imagery for eighteen years, who may well have understood its meaning much earlier than he claims, and who demonstrated such catastrophically poor judgment even in the most charitable interpretation, deserves a Senate seat. It means deciding that defeating Susan Collins is worth the message this sends about what behavior disqualifies someone from representing the party. It means concluding that the instrumental value of power outweighs these costs.

Again, politicians make these calculations all the time. Both parties are more than willing to overlook their side's moral lapses. When Marjorie Taylor Greene was still considered mainstream Republican, her own antisemitism was largely papered over by her party.  Smaller lapses in judgement are weighed against larger political goals, and in some cases the importance of political power do indeed outweigh those lapses. So does the existence and quality of any apologies. But if the party is not willing to say that out loud, then they have another ethical problem. 

In this case, the willful blindness is extreme. Platner's excuse is a lie, and everyone knows it. If a Republican had done something similar the Democrats would be filling up the media with outrage. 

The deeper problem is that refusing to acknowledge value calculations of power vs. morality makes it impossible to establish any meaningful boundaries. If there is no honest weighing of power against principle, then there is no way to say where the line is. What level of past misconduct would be disqualifying? What evidence of antisemitism would matter? The answer cannot be "none," but without transparent weighing of values, that becomes the de facto position.

This matters beyond Platner's candidacy. Every political movement claims to stand for certain principles. But principles come into tension with each other and with the practical requirements of wielding power. The test of a serious political movement is not whether it faces such tensions, but whether it faces them honestly.

Values must be weighed. Power is among those values, instrumental but real. The question is whether we are willing to do that weighing in the open, where the costs and benefits can be seen and debated, or whether we will pretend the weighing is unnecessary and hope nobody notices what we have chosen.

But when you look at the world through the prism of values, it is very clear which values the Democratic Party have chosen in this case.




Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

   
 

 

Wednesday, October 22, 2025



The New York Times today published two letters that perfectly capture the incoherence at the heart of our free speech debates. One lawyer argued that campus speech disruptions matter less than government crackdowns on dissent. Another writer pointed out that protecting white supremacist Richard Spencer at the University of Florida cost over $600,000 in security—roughly equivalent to a year's tuition for one hundred students, and free speech does not justify this expense.

Meanwhile, another Times article today profiled pro-Palestinian activists who feel chastened after intense backlash to campus protests. Some wear masks to demonstrations, worried about job prospects. One Palestinian-American student said simply: "I am scared to talk about Palestine and I'm Palestinian."

Everyone claims their speech rights are under assault, yet somehow everyone also seems to be silencing everyone else. Campus speakers require small armies for protection. Protesters face professional blacklisting. Students fear expressing their identities. Administrators cave to political pressure from all sides.

We have lost the ability to distinguish between protecting speech and protecting speakers, between civil disobedience and coercion, between the right to protest and the right to silence others. This is not a free speech crisis. It is an ethics crisis. 

I am writing a book that argues that a secularized form of Jewish ethics is exactly what the world needs today. These are exactly the types of thorny questions that a cohesive ethics framework can help answer, and where today's existing ethics frameworks fall woefully short.

Consider how the Times article on anti-Israel protests systematically conflates different categories of action. Some students participated in peaceful protests. Others occupied buildings, blocked access to classes, and harassed Jewish students. The article treats these as points on a single spectrum of "protest activity" and "civil disobedience" rather than fundamentally different kinds of acts. But the ethical obligations around speech are not identical to the obligations around physical obstruction and intimidation. You may have the right to express unpopular views. You do not have the right to prevent others from accessing their workplace, attending their classes, or moving freely through public spaces.

When activists shut down bridges and train stations, they were not engaging in speech. They were using their bodies as weapons to coerce compliance. The same applies to occupying campus buildings or blocking access to facilities. These are forms of power assertion, not discourse. The article quotes Tyler Coward of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression expressing concern about threats "both from the government and from within the university itself that are really damaging the climate for open debate." But notice what is missing: any discussion of threats from protesters themselves to open debate and free inquiry. When students chant slogans that make Jewish peers feel unsafe, occupy buildings, disrupt classes, and prevent normal university operations, they are exercising power to silence others. Calling it "resistance" does not change its nature.

The article quotes activists with wistfulness: "We spent a year thinking about what went wrong. We thought we'd all get arrested, and then everyone would rise up and stop the United States from aiding Israel." This is remarkably revealing. These activists did not think they were participating in conversation. They thought they were sparking revolution. They believed disrupting normal university operations would force others to see the world as they did and join their cause. This is not the mindset of people engaged in persuasion. It is the mindset of people engaged in coercion.

Civil disobedience in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. involved accepting punishment as part of bearing moral witness. Modern campus protesters seem shocked their actions carried consequences. They occupied buildings and blocked access, then expressed outrage that universities suspended them or withheld degrees. They engaged in tactics designed to impose costs on others, then claimed victim status when they themselves faced costs. There is a coherent ethical framework for protest that crosses legal boundaries: accepting responsibility for the breach, making the moral case so compelling that the punishment itself becomes persuasive, and maintaining nonviolent discipline. What we saw on many campuses was different: attempts to impose costs without bearing them, to disrupt others' lives while claiming immunity, to silence opposing views while demanding protection for one's own. That is not about exercising rights. It is about weaponizing rights.

The proper response to these thorny questions is not whataboutism. If politicians or campus administrators go too far to penalize valid protests, then that should be called out as unethical as well. The underlying error is treating ethical evaluation as comparative rather than categorical. An act is either ethical or not based on its own merits, not based on whether something worse exists elsewhere. The whataboutism defense reveals how thoroughly rights language has corrupted our moral reasoning. We cannot acknowledge that our side might have done something wrong without feeling we have conceded the entire argument. We have lost the ability to say: "Yes, what we did was problematic, but it does not rise to the level of what they did, and both can be true simultaneously."

Then there are competing obligations that transcend simple questions of free speech rights. 

When the University of Florida hosted Spencer in 2017, security cost over $600,000. Spencer's organization paid about $10,000 to rent space. The university paid the rest. One Times op-ed argues universities should "proudly pay for as much security as is necessary" to protect free speech. But this misses the fundamental question: is spending the equivalent of one hundred students' annual tuition to protect one speaker a sound allocation of university resources?

This is not primarily a free speech question. It is an institutional ethics question. Universities have finite resources and multiple obligations: educating students, supporting research, maintaining facilities, providing financial aid. The reflex to frame every campus controversy as a free speech issue prevents us from asking whether universities should be required to host any speaker regardless of cost.

But there is a deeper problem. If people understood the line between speech and coercion, we should never reach the point where threats to peace are so dangerous that half a million dollars in security becomes necessary. Police are needed to protect against violence, not against nonviolent protest. When security costs reach this level, something has gone catastrophically wrong with our civic culture.

The massive security requirement reveals one of two ethical failures. Either the anticipated protesters do not understand that disrupting an event through force or intimidation crosses from protest into coercion—in which case our educational institutions have failed to teach basic civic ethics—or the speaker's own words constitute incitement that predictably provokes violence. If Spencer's rhetoric itself incites violence or constitutes threats, then he has disqualified himself as a legitimate campus speaker regardless of First Amendment protections. Universities are not required to provide platforms for speech that crosses from persuasion into incitement. The question is not whether Spencer has a legal right to speak somewhere, but whether a university or other institution has an ethical obligation to facilitate it.

The problem is that we have lost the conceptual framework to make these distinctions clearly. Instead of asking "Does this speech serve truth-seeking or does it incite harm?" we ask only "Is this legally protected speech?" These are different questions requiring different kinds of reasoning—ethical versus legal—and conflating them leaves us unable to resolve the dilemma.

Perhaps the most complex issue involves career penalties. Should students face professional consequences for political activism? The Times profiles students "worried the blowback has been so severe that the American belief in civil disobedience to achieve political ends has been eroded." Jewish ethics offers more nuance than rights language allows. Human dignity suggests people should not face professional ruin for expressing political views, particularly on matters of conscience. But truth-seeking and institutional integrity suggest organizations have legitimate interests in evaluating whether prospective employees' publicly expressed views are compatible with the organization's mission.

The distinction matters. If a student participated in peaceful protest, wrote opinion pieces, or engaged in lawful advocacy, punishing them professionally seems vindictive and wrong. But if they participated in tactics that violated others' rights, engaged in harassment or intimidation, or celebrated violence, then organizations are justified in considering that behavior relevant to employment. This is not about punishing political views. It is about evaluating character and judgment. The article mentions federal judges declaring they would not hire law clerks from Columbia because of how it handled demonstrations. This seems like collective punishment, penalizing students who had no control over administrative decisions. But business figures discouraging employers from hiring specific activists who crossed ethical lines are making individual judgments about specific conduct. That is categorically different. The principle is not "never let politics affect employment decisions." It is "distinguish between lawful political expression and conduct that violates ethical obligations toward others."

The Times article notes that "some states have tried to put new restrictions on campus speech that are testing the limits of the First Amendment. Last week, a judge blocked a Texas law that would forbid protest activity at public universities during nighttime hours and would limit noise, among other restrictions." But noise ordinances are not a free speech issue. Every municipality has noise ordinances restricting how loudly you can play music or set off fireworks, particularly at night. No one considers this a grave threat to liberty. We accept that your right to make noise ends where it creates unreasonable burdens on others' ability to sleep, study, or enjoy their property.

Why should protest be different? To say that protests can violate others' rights while late night wedding receptions cannot is to twist free speech in ways that make it run roughshod over other rights. The entire idea of competing rights muddies the waters of what is permissible or not. The Bill of Rights allows owning guns, that does not mean one can practice shooting at 2 AM. Rallies with megaphones are no different. The ethical principle is proportionality. Your right to express political views does not override others' right to access their workplace, attend their classes, or move through public spaces. When protest tactics impose costs on people who are not the targets and who have no power to address the protesters' grievances, those tactics cross ethical lines.

All of this confusion reveals the bankruptcy of rights-based frameworks for resolving complex social conflicts. When everyone claims absolute rights and no one acknowledges competing obligations, we get paralysis punctuated by power struggles. What we need is a coherent ethical framework that acknowledges multiple legitimate interests and provides principled ways to balance them. Start with core values: truth, dignity, mutual responsibility, preventing harm. These are not competing rights that cancel each other out. They are complementary obligations that create conditions for human flourishing.

Here is one suggested framework applied to campus controversies. 

On controversial speakers: Universities should protect unpopular views but are not obligated to subsidize unlimited security costs. Rescheduling for safety is not censorship. Refusing to spend $600,000 on security for one speaker is reasonable resource allocation.

On speaker obligations: Anyone invited to speak should be willing to engage in dialogue, not just broadcast monologues. Speakers who refuse to take questions are not participating in the academic enterprise. They are using campus facilities as platforms for propaganda.

On protest tactics: Peaceful protest, including walkouts and symbolic demonstrations, should be protected even when offensive. But tactics that prevent others from hearing speakers, accessing buildings, or conducting normal business cross ethical lines. The test is not whether the cause is just but whether the tactics respect others' equal standing as moral agents.

On professional consequences: Students should not face career penalties for lawful political expression, even when unpopular. But organizations are justified in considering whether students' publicly expressed views or actions suggest poor judgment or unwillingness to respect others. The distinction is between penalizing political identity and evaluating character.

On institutional obligations: Universities must protect students from harassment regardless of political content. When protests create environments where Jewish students fear attending class, the university has failed. When administrators suspend students for peaceful sit-ins while ignoring harassment of minorities, they have abdicated responsibility. The standard is not ideological neutrality but functional integrity: can all students pursue education without fear?

On the difference between speech and incitement: Calling for illegitimate violence, even in coded language, is never acceptable. Chanting "Globalize the Intifada" or "By any means necessary" are calls to violence that cross the line from free speech into incitement.

This framework will not eliminate controversy. Hard cases remain hard. But it provides structure for reasoning through conflicts that honors multiple legitimate concerns rather than treating every issue as a battle between absolute rights.

The real free speech crisis is not that controversial speakers face protests. It is that we have lost the ability to distinguish between speech and conduct, between discourse and coercion, between protecting expression and subsidizing disruption. A university committed to truth would say: we welcome vigorous disagreement, but we insist on intellectual honesty. We protect speech, but we do not subsidize security circuses. We honor protest, but we prohibit coercion. We evaluate ideas based on their correspondence to reality, not their political valence. We hold everyone to the same standards of ethical conduct.

That is not censorship. That is integrity. And it is exactly what our universities, and our society, desperately need.




Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

   
 

 

Monday, September 29, 2025


We are now in the Ten Days of Repentance, when Jews prepare for Yom Kippur through self-examination, apology, repair, and teshuvah -  repentance that is meant not only to change what we do, but who we are.

As I have been working on my project to rework Jewish thinking as a secular philosophy, I am struck by how Jewish concepts can be meaningful even outside a faith-based framework. It is a testament to the brilliance of Jewish philosophy that the concepts are truly universal. 

Teshuvah is a perfect example. 

Teshuvah helps shine a light on something philosophy has struggled with for centuries: the debate over free will and determinism.

The question is usually framed this way: are our choices truly free, or are they determined by forces outside our control?

  • Determinists argue that our brains are machines. Genetics, environment, trauma, and biases dictate what we do. Psychology supports this view: Jonathan Haidt shows how moral “taste buds” of intuition drive most decisions; Daniel Kahneman uncovers the predictable biases that shape our judgments.

  • Defenders of free will insist there is a spark of autonomy. We could have chosen otherwise, and because of that we remain morally responsible.

  • Compatibilists redefine free will as simply the absence of coercion: you are free if no one is forcing you. But that leaves us prisoners of our desires themselves, which are just as binding as chains are. 

All these positions feel incomplete. If determinism rules, then responsibility dissolves. If absolute freedom rules, then why do habits and conditioning weigh so heavily on us? And if free will simply means that we choose even if we are conditioned to do so, then that just sidesteps the problem.

Judaism reframes the problem through teshuvah.

Teshuvah is not a feeling of regret or a private moment of resolve. It is a structured set of obligations: to repair relationships, to return what was taken, to apologize to those harmed, to pray, to give, to act differently.

What matters most is not what you feel inside but what you do. Even a reluctant act of kindness is still kindness. Even a forced apology opens the door to reconciliation. Deeds matter, and over time they reshape the heart and your entire personality. 

Modern science now affirms what Judaism long taught.

  • Neuroplasticity shows that repeated actions rewire the brain.

  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy proves that changing behavior alters thoughts and emotions.

  • Self-perception theory reveals that we learn who we are by watching what we do.

We do not have to wait for our feelings to change before acting differently. We can choose actions that override our default desires -  and in time, those actions carve new patterns of desire itself.

But how do we know which actions to choose? Here Judaism adds another layer. Freedom is not arbitrary choice; it is choice guided by obligation.

Obligations to others demand that we repair harm. Obligations to ourselves call us to honesty and growth. These obligations provide the structure that allows action to be more than whim:  they point us toward responsibility. And the obligations themselves are directly derived from universal values. 

This is where existing philosophy often falters. Compatibilism reduces freedom to acting according to one’s desires, but that leaves us prisoners of those very desires. Libertarian free will emphasizes freedom but does not deal with obligations or the values that give freedom its moral weight. 

Teshuvah offers a better answer: responsibility lies in our capacity to act against our inertia and to realign our derech, our path and trajectory.  We are not accountable for having biases, but for whether we let them dictate us. Our freedom is measured in deeds that change the course of our lives.

We know intuitively that this is true. In a loose sense, people make changes to their derachim, their paths, all the time. People quit smoking and alcohol, people choose to exercise. This is a type of teshuvah, a choice to go against our ingrained desires and better ourselves by forcing new actions, and then the new actions become habit - a new derech

Changing a derech isn't easy. It requires determination and a willingness to change. And above all, it requires one to take on new obligations - real actions, not just a change in one's mindset. Recognizing that you need to be healthy is meaningless without actually changing habits, and recognizing that you need to be kinder to your neighbors is equally meaningless if you don't change your actions towards them. 

Teshuvah does not pretend away determinism, nor does it deny the weight of choice. It shows how transformation actually happens: through obligations that guide us, and through actions that, when repeated, become who we are. 

That is why Judaism insists that Yom Kippur can make us new. Not because we escape the past, and not because we float free of cause and effect, but because we take responsibility through action.

Teshuvah is freedom in practice — the freedom to become a different person who actively chooses a different path. 

That is why teshuvah is not only a religious command but a universal gift. It shows that freedom is not an illusion, nor a mystery, but a practice: of taking responsibility, fulfilling obligations, and becoming new.




Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

   
 

 

Sunday, September 21, 2025

I saw an article on how "most therapy is trash." I cannot vouch for the article, but it made me think - how would therapy work under the ethical framework I have been working on? How different would it be?

The answer seems to be, quite a lot.

The Derechology framework I have been working on posits a basic fact that most systems do not accept: that values are baked into human thinking, and are not external. This could change the assumptions behind therapy as it has been practiced.

Walk into any therapist's office today, and the conversation will likely begin the same way: "What brings you here? What's wrong? What symptoms are you experiencing?" The entire therapeutic enterprise is built on a medical model that treats emotional and moral struggles as pathology to be diagnosed and fixed.

But what if this approach has it exactly backwards? What if the problem isn't that people are broken, but that they've lost connection to their own moral compass? What if healing doesn't require fixing what's wrong with someone, but helping them rediscover what's right about them?

Modern therapy inherits its framework from medicine: identify symptoms, diagnose conditions, apply treatments. Depression gets treated with cognitive restructuring. Anxiety gets managed with coping strategies. Relationship problems get addressed through communication skills.

But when these problems are looked at through a derechological lens, the idea is that they are rarely suffering from cognitive deficits. They're suffering from moral drift.

They've lost touch with their core values. They can't navigate competing obligations. They don't know how to make decisions that align with who they actually are, rather than who they think they should be.

When you look at values as atomic to human nature itself, as fundamental  to our being as language or consciousness, it changes the entire model of healing. Moral confusion isn't a character flaw or psychological disorder. It's more like being lost without a compass. The solution isn't to diagnose what's wrong with your navigation system - it's to help you reconnect with your internal moral GPS.

The question isn't "What's wrong with you?" but "Where are you on your derech (moral path,) and what might growth look like from here?" 

I worked with my AskHillel AI to develop a system for therapy. It suggested practical tools like:

Moral Compass Scan: Helping clients identify their most trusted internal signals, whether they are somatic sensations, behavioral patterns or recurring thoughts, that indicate alignment or misalignment with their core values.

Derech Drift Map: Instead of treating disorientation as failure, this tool helps people understand where they are in their moral journey: whether they're in a period of rupture, wilderness wandering, return, or transformation.

Teshuvah as Moral Version Control: Change isn't about erasing the past or achieving perfection. It's about making the next "commit" in your moral development - iterative growth rather than binary success/failure.

The therapist's role becomes fundamentally different too. Rather than diagnosing disorder, the therapist becomes a derech witness -  a mirror for the client’s moral motion, not a mapmaker; a partner who offers models rather than mandates for ethical response.

The system treats people as inherently worthy moral agents rather than broken systems needing repair.

This isn't just more compassionate - it's more accurate. When you start with the assumption that people have intrinsic moral dignity and are capable of ethical growth, you create space for the kind of healing that actually transforms lives rather than just managing symptoms.

And there's a deeper implication here. If this values-first approach proves more effective for individual healing, it suggests something profound about human nature itself. It validates the core insight of Derechology: that morality isn't something imposed on humans from outside, but something that emerges from our fundamental nature.

People want moral clarity. They want to know not just how to feel better, but how to live in alignment with who they actually are. 

If therapy could offer that - if it could help people reconnect with their intrinsic moral architecture rather than just managing their psychological symptoms - it might finally address the deeper crisis driving so many people to therapists' offices in the first place.

To my understanding, this is similar to the approach used in ACT therapy, but it is more oriented towards morality and moral path more than just values.

It is important to emphasize that while these insights come from my work on Jewish ethics, the moral path discovered does not have to be Jewish at all. Everyone has their own "ethical gravity well" that comes from their upbringing. 

The question isn't whether people are broken. The question is whether they remember who they are.

And that's a question worth building an entire therapeutic framework around.





Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

   
 

 

Tuesday, September 09, 2025

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President Emeritus of the Union for Reform Judaism, writes in Haaretz:
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, is charming, attractive, bright and a natural politician. Energetic, enormously talented and only thirty-three years old, in the Democratic primary he ran a brilliant campaign.

Is Mamdani too good to be true? Unfortunately, he is.

Despite his many virtues, this attractive, articulate man, with the popular touch and Trumpian feel for politics, is a virulent, relentless anti-Zionist.
There is a huge difference between Greek-style virtues and Jewish-style values. Yoffie is dazzled by the former and seems uninterested in the latter.

In Greek thought, aretē means excellence - personal charm, beauty, eloquence, or skill - and these virtues have become considered moral in themselves in Western thought. 

Look at Yoffie's list of Mamdani's virtues - he is charming, attractive, bright, energetic. These correspond to Aristotelian personal virtues like rhetorical skill, aesthetic grace and friendship. 

But virtues aren't values. Values are reflected in what a person does, not in personality traits. Values transform reality towards the good; virtues are window dressing. 

Awful people can have charisma. Greek virtues like courage, intelligence and eloquence can be used for moral or immoral purposes. 

Jewish ethics knows this. While Maimonides discusses Aristotelian virtues in detail, he positions them as a prerequisite to getting close to God and to do mitzvot properly - they are a means, not an end. 

A better article would have examined Mamdani's claimed values. Mamdani says he wants to help the poor and oppressed, yet his implementation of such programs is classically socialist. He wants to redistribute wealth, dividing New Yorkers into "oppressed" and "oppressors," and fostering hate instead of unity. Socialists like Mamdani promulgate a simplistic view of the world that sound attractive but are unjust. 

We know from history that Jews end up always being categorized and stereotyped as the oppressors, not the oppressed, in socialist circles. 

Yet Yoffie doesn't even engage in that discussion of the shortcomings of Mamdani's intended policies and how they are likely to affect Jews.  He doesn't even consider what Mamdani would do to the economy and safety of the city as a whole. Instead, he praises virtues as if they are values on their own. He correctly calls Mamdani an Israel-hater, but that is only the beginning of the objections to his policies, even for Jewish liberals. 

When people cannot distinguish between virtues and values, they lose all perspective of morality. For a rabbi to do this so enthusiastically shows that Jews themselves need to relearn the basics of Jewish values and how to act according to them. 





Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

   
 

 

Monday, August 25, 2025



Over the past day I started using AI to simulate how different ethical philosophies would interact with my AskHillel/Secular Covenantalism model based on Jewish ethics. I would put SC up against, say, Utilitarians in a situation where they had to compete for scarce resources or decide to cooperate or compete when faced with an external threat, and how their relationship would evolve over time as well as how the general public would react to their decisions. It's been a lot of fun and so far my framework does quite well in many metrics, but not all. (In the metrics that moral people would prioritize, it does very well.)

But then I came closer to home. 

I would simulate a country like Israel that adopts the Secular Covenantalism framework to deal with Gaza-like dilemmas  -  ceasefires, rockets, hostage-taking, propaganda campaigns - and see what happens when they’re forced to decide these difficult decisions under pressure. 

Like Jews, they argued. One voice demanded retaliation to protect lives, another urged restraint for human dignity, a third insisted truth must trump spin. Every round ended in compromise: often slow, argumentative, and untidy. But those compromises worked. They saved lives, preserved civilian dignity, and stayed within the boundaries of law and ethics.

But they were making these decisions in an environment where other philosophies could criticize them in the court of public opinion. I ran one simulation against social justice thinking and another against Marxist thinking and criticism. 

Social Justice collapsed everything into one equation: strong = guilty, weak = righteous. A hospital packed with weapons? “That’s just a racist trope.” Hostages dragged into tunnels? “Desperation, not a crime.” 

Marxism was even cruder: all violence by the “oppressed” was revolution, all peace deals were traps, and all rules were bourgeois tricks. In both cases, reality didn’t matter:  only the story did.

The results were stark. SC consistently won on the ground  - it acted ethically, minimized lives lost, and won the war militarily.  But in the public relations battle, Social Justice and Marxism consistently won. The Jewish-derived framework protected lives; social justice and Marxism projected empty slogans.

And the world preferred the simple, one-dimensional messages from these movements over what the Secular Covenantalists decided.

Of course, Israel itself is not an algorithm. This was an oversimplification in many ways. In real life, decisions are made under pressures the simulations can’t capture. Rockets and terror attacks don’t wait for committee meetings and debates, as the model did. Coalition politics, regional alliances, and public morale all weigh in. And unlike a sterile model, Israel carries the weight of Jewish history: the memory that if Jews miscalculate, the cost is annihilation. That changes the cost/benefit analysis, since a single wrong move can be catastrophic. 

But the major factor missing in the criticism of the secular "Israel" was antisemitism. I didn't put Jews in the model, so the criticisms were not motivated by antipathy towards Jews. . 

When I changed that, and added a latent, subconscious antisemitism into the mix, things got much uglier. And they started looking a lot like the world we live in now.

Every Israeli act of self-defense is immoral by definition. Every forensic report is propaganda by definition. Every hesitation is hypocrisy by definition. With antisemitism baked into the culture, the PR slogans don’t just dominate the conversation -  they become the conversation. The antisemitism is precisely the factor that changes the conversation from being against "privileged" or "bourgeoise" into slanders like “genocide” accusations, proposals of sanctions and the grotesque spectacle of a Jewish state framed as the world’s greatest human-rights violator. It’s not a double standard, it’s a single standard: Jews lose.

This is what happens when morality collapses into public relations. Ethics stops being about obligations, outcomes, or human flourishing, and becomes about branding. A hashtag is now more moral than a hostage rescue. A viral image counts for more than a 100 page report. The strong are always wicked, the weak always pure. It’s not moral reasoning -  it’s moral marketing.

And it is brutally hard to fight. 

Even if an entire alternative moral media infrastructure was built, it doesn't stand a chance against sound bites. Real life is not black and white - but people want to see black and white in their news feeds. 

Fact-checking is pointless when the game isn’t about facts but "vibes."

In the simulations, AskHillel/SC won the ground but lost the crowd. Social Justice and Marxism won the crowd but far more would have died if they had their way. That is the world we live in today:  a world where the people who actually care about lives are called monsters, and the people who excuse murder position themselves as moral.

When ethics becomes PR, reality itself becomes immoral.




Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

   
 

 

Wednesday, August 06, 2025

Earlier today I saw an interview on Quillette with Dr. Andre Oboler, the CEO of the Online Hate Prevention Institute, about online hate and what can be done about it.

I realized that this could be another great application of derechology, my universal ethical framework based on Jewish ethics.. 

So I started a discussion with AskHillel, the AI I built using derechology principles, and after some back and forth we came up with a social media policy - heavily leaning on AI to implement - that would leave the posters, the readers and the social media companies themselves feeling much better than they do today.

The problem now is that there are no clear standards, there is no transparency, the social media users who are offended do not see any recourse that ever works and the people being censored don't have a clear idea why. The social media companies are inundated with requests for review that swamp them. The whole thing is a mess.

This can be solved.

First of all is the standards. These should be values, not detailed rules, as far as what is not allowed and what is potentially a problem. The values should follow the derechological baseline values: protection of life, dignity of people, mutual responsibility. 

When a person posts something that is illegal, like child pornography, there is no choice: it must be stopped and reported.

But the vast majority of issues that are gray areas like phrases that can mean incitement to violence but can have innocuous interpretations as well, or negative stereotypes of groups of people, can be dealt with by AI before they are posted. The key is transparency. The AI can explain why the post might be a violation of the platform's values - and then offer for the user to reword it, or offer to rephrase it itself, until both sides approve the message and it can be posted. If the user disagrees and insists that it be posted as-is, the AI will allow it but will inform the user that the post will have a flag attached, and/or it will be limited in visibility.  

This way the platform does not look like a censor but as a partner, assuming good faith and wanting to work together to craft a message that would not hurt others. 

On the other side, if a user is offended by a post, the AI can explain why it was allowed, and discuss that with the user as well. The user might point out, for example, that the post used a dog-whistle that has a hidden racist meaning. In that case, the AI can log the issue and it can be referred to humans for further research. Otherwise, the AI can offer not only to block that poster for the user but also to block other posts that share the same issues. 

Everything has to be upfront and honest. If the AI cannot assure the user that a human will review every case, it should say so, but also point out that (given user permission) the discussions can be logged and aggregated in case there are many people who are offended. If a user has a pattern of offensive posts, the AI can inform them that after a specific score is reached they may be suspended. But the reasons must always be clear.

This method is so much better than what is happening now. There are no black boxes - reasons are always available and the rules, and consequences, are public.  The social media platform is not presented as authoritarian but as caring. The AIs would be polite and engaging. And the number of posts that require human review would go down greatly, helping the social media companies.

This is yet another way derechology  can take a seemingly intractable problem and view it anew through a lens of values, responsibility and humility to help everyone get what they want.
_______________________

Here is the full suggested design:

Ethical Design Document: Universal Social Media Policy (Value-Aligned Framework)

Purpose: To implement a values-rooted, universal social media policy for a mainstream platform, balancing freedom of expression with moral responsibility. This framework draws from foundational ethical principles and is designed to be inclusive and applicable across diverse contexts.


I. Core Ethical Framework

PrincipleFunction
Inherent Human WorthEvery user has dignity. Harmful content must be addressed respectfully, not erased thoughtlessly.
Truth and HonestyAll moderation actions must be transparent, fact-based, and subject to review.
Shared ResponsibilityPlatforms are accountable for what they allow or amplify. Silence or inaction can cause real harm.
Duty to Prevent HarmPlatforms must not stand by when foreseeable harm could occur.
No Enabling of Harmful BehaviorPlatforms must avoid features that promote outrage, bullying, or manipulation.
Public IntegrityMishandling speech ethics undermines trust in the platform and the communities it serves.
Humility in AutomationAI systems must acknowledge their limitations. Every user has a right to appeal and clarity.

II. AI Moderation Logic

1. Harm Detection Thresholds AI flags content likely to cause harm based on:

  • Dehumanizing language

  • Incitement to violence or discrimination

  • Misleading or doctored content

  • Personal attacks, group slurs, or mockery of suffering

2. Real-Time Ethical Dialogue Before publishing, users receive a contextual message:

"This post may be perceived as harmful due to [reason]. Our ethical guidelines emphasize dignity and respectful communication. Would you like to revise, discuss, or continue as-is?"

Options:

  • "Edit with Suggestions"

  • "Discuss with AI"

  • "Post Anyway (Visibility May Be Reduced)"

  • "Learn More About This Warning"

If "Discuss with AI" is selected:

  • The AI engages in a structured, respectful dialogue to understand user intent.

  • The user may explain context, clarify meaning, or propose alternate wording.

  • Together, the AI and user may co-create a revised version that preserves intent while reducing risk of harm or misunderstanding.

  • At the end of the interaction, the user is asked:

    "Would you like to anonymously share this dialogue with the platform's ethics team to help improve our policies?"

    • If accepted, the data is sent anonymized and used for policy refinement.

    • This supports ongoing ethical learning and accountability — a model of platform-level course correction.

3. Visibility Management If posted without revision:

  • Post is algorithmically downranked

  • Visible advisory label is attached

  • Viewers may choose to hide, report, or engage with content thoughtfully

4. Appeal and Oversight

  • All flagged content can be appealed

  • Human reviewers trained in ethics review each case

  • AI decision-making is transparent and available for scrutiny

5. Hard Threshold for Illegal or Dangerous Content Some content must be removed immediately and cannot be published under any condition. This includes:

  • Verified illegal material (e.g., child exploitation, terror propaganda, threats of violence)

  • Clear and imminent incitement to violence

  • Content explicitly designed to cause harm or violate platform or legal safety standards

For such content:

  • No option to edit or post is provided

  • AI issues a clear explanation and cites relevant policy or legal standard

  • Content and metadata are quarantined for audit purposes

  • If criminal in nature, the platform reports to appropriate authorities, even if the content was never posted. This includes mandatory reporting of child exploitation material, as required by law. In 2024 alone, over 36 million such reports were filed globally.

  • An appeal process exists, but the default action is immediate suppression and referral


III. Platform Integrity Measures

  • Transparency Portal: Public access to all moderation rules and the ethics behind them

  • Graceful Correction: Users can revise or delete content without punishment or shame

  • Propaganda Safeguards: Moderation training and data screening guard against misinformation, manipulation, and biased framing

  • Protection of Diverse Voices: Disagreement is welcome; only speech that causes harm is moderated


IV. Platform Message to Users

"Speech is power. Use it as if every person matters — because they do."


V. User Response to Perceived Harm

If a user encounters content they find offensive or harmful, they are offered a respectful pathway to respond:

  • Flag and Explain: The user may flag the content and describe — in their own words — why they found it troubling.

  • AI Acknowledgment and Clarification: The AI responds by explaining why the content was not automatically flagged, while respectfully acknowledging the user's experience.

  • Offer of Anonymous Logging: The user is asked:

    "Would you like to anonymously share this flag and explanation with the platform's ethics team to inform future policy adjustments?"

    • If accepted, the data is anonymized and logged.

    • Users are informed that while not all cases receive individual review, all are weighted using transparent criteria and can influence platform-wide ethical refinement.

  • Personal Content Controls:

    • Users may choose to block the individual post, the user who posted it, or all content matching similar categories or patterns.

    • Settings are customizable, respectful, and clearly explained.

This process ensures both dignity and protection for those affected by harmful speech, fostering a culture of mutual responsibility and continuous learning.


Note: This policy expresses ethical reasoning and universal principles of responsible communication. It does not replace legal compliance or cultural sensitivity, but aims to create a safe and respectful digital public square.





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For most of us, "the law" feels like a settled thing. It's in multivolume thick books, enforced by robed figures, and seems to operate with a clear set of rules. From the outside, you might expect legal philosophy – 
jurisprudence – to be a quiet academic subject, simply cataloging those rules.

But you'd be wrong. In reality, jurisprudence is one of the most fiercely debated and surprisingly unsettled fields in all of philosophy. And as we've already seen with so many other philosophical debates, the AskHillel Jewish-based philosophy I've been developing, which I am starting to refer to as "derechology,"  offers a revolutionary path to bring clarity and accountability to this ancient discipline.

At its heart, jurisprudence grapples with fundamental questions: What is law? Where does its authority come from? Is it merely a set of commands, or must it align with deeper moral truths? How do we interpret it? And when there is an edge case that could go either way, what methods can judges or courts use to come up with answers?

These aren't just academic curiosities; they dictate how justice is dispensed, how societies are governed, and how individual rights and duties are understood. The reason the field is so contentious is that these core questions have never been definitively answered, leading to fractured and often contradictory schools of thought:

  • Legal Positivism: This school argues that law is simply what is formally enacted by a legitimate authority, regardless of its moral content. Rules are rules. Hopefully the laws are aligned with ethics, but there are plenty of cases of outdated and bizarre sounding laws that many of us have laughed at. Do they still apply? While this method offers clarity, at least outside those edge cases, it struggles to explain why we should obey an unjust law, or how to challenge one.

  • Natural Law Theory: In contrast, this tradition insists that true law must reflect universal moral truths – whether from God, reason, or nature. It provides a moral compass but can be abstract, leading to debates about whose "universal truths" apply.

  • Legal Realism: Cynically, realists argue that law isn't about grand principles or formal rules, but simply "what judges do in fact." It's a description of power dynamics, but offers no moral guidance or aspiration. If a judge rules, that's the law. 

  • Dworkinian Interpretivism: Ronald Dworkin argued that law is a moral practice, and judges should interpret it to make the legal system as just and coherent as possible. This is a sophisticated approach, but it often leaves the "how" of moral interpretation to a judge's intuition, without a clear, structured method. 

  • Critical Theories (e.g., Critical Legal Studies, Feminist, Critical Race Jurisprudence): These schools expose how law has historically been a tool of power, perpetuating injustice based on race, gender, or class. While vital for revealing systemic bias, they can sometimes deconstruct law so thoroughly that they undermine its coherence or replace it entirely with politics and activism.

The result of these conflicting views is a field that often feels unstable, even chaotic - the exact opposite of how many think of law. 

Interestingly, the Jewish legal system of halacha has versions of these same debates. Some (notably J. David Bleich) mirror the legal positivism theory with halacha, saying that there should be a minimum of flexibility in rulings. Many other halachic decisors either embrace a conscious application or morality to the law or an implicit application of them, using legal ideas like lifnim meshurat hadin (going beyond the letter of the law), or darchei noam (The Torah's ways are pleasant) to justify their rulings. There is not the same level of seeming chaos within the halachic system as with general jurisprudence but these questions are fundamental. 

One of the core reasons for this instability is an undeniable truth: judges are human. No legal code, no matter how exhaustive, can anticipate every unique situation, every unforeseen technological advance, or every clash of values.

In these "hard cases" – where laws conflict, where precedent is ambiguous, or where the application of a rule seems to lead to an unjust outcome – judges must exercise discretion. They must make a judgment call, weighing competing principles and values. This is the source of the "flexibility" that can feel so unsettling, because it implies a degree of subjectivity in a system we expect to be objective.

Current legal philosophies struggle to adequately guide this judicial discretion:

  • Positivism largely ignores it, insisting judges simply apply rules, even when the rules are silent or lead to absurdity.

  • Legal Realism embraces it, but offers no ethical framework for how judges should exercise that power, leaving it to individual whim or political bias.

  • Dworkin came very close. He insisted that judges must interpret law in its "best moral light" and strive for "integrity." But he didn't provide the structured methodology for how judges should actually do that moral reasoning, especially when values collide. He lacked a clear hierarchy or override mechanism, leaving judges to rely on intuition rather than a transparent, auditable process.

This absence of a clear, accountable method for exercising moral judgment is why the field appears so "flexible" or even "chaotic." It's not that anything goes, but that the reasons for judicial choices are often opaque, making them seem arbitrary or ideologically driven.

This is where derechology, represented by the AskHillel AI framework I've been working on, can revolutionize jurisprudence. It doesn't pretend that judicial discretion can be eliminated. Instead, it offers a framework for structured subjectivity with accountable transparency – what we might call "Corrigible Integrity."

Derechology provides the missing ethical infrastructure that Dworkin's vision implied but never built. It transforms legal reasoning into a moral discipline by requiring judges and legal systems to explicitly engage with values:

  1. Law as a Web of Obligations, Rooted in Values: Derechology shifts the focus from abstract "rights" (which often conflict without resolution) to obligations that flow directly from a hierarchy of core values. Laws gain legitimacy not from mere authority, but from how well they reflect our shared duties to life, dignity, justice, and community.

  2. Structured Triage and Override Logic: When legal values collide (e.g., free speech vs. public safety, property rights vs. saving a life), derechology provides a transparent system for identifying the values at stake, weighing them according to an established hierarchy, and declaring which value yields to another in that specific context. This is the "how" that Dworkin was missing.

  3. Amplifier Disclosure: Derechology acknowledges that contextual factors (amplifiers) can modulate the weight of values and obligations. Judges would be required to explicitly state which amplifiers were considered and how they influenced the decision, adding another layer of transparency.

  4. Corrigibility and Teshuvah (Realignment): Derechology builds in mechanisms for institutional "repentance" and realignment. If a legal decision is later found to be morally flawed (perhaps due to new information, technology advances or a deeper ethical understanding), the system provides a framework  - indeed, the obligation - for acknowledging the error, explaining the value misprioritization, and correcting course. This makes the legal system capable of moral growth.

  5. Pluralism with Ethical Anchors: Derechology allows for the coexistence of different legal systems (e.g., religious, indigenous, international law) by insisting that while their specific rules may differ, they must all adhere to universal ethical anchors (like the ethoskeleton's principles of Dignity, Truth, and Relational Integrity). 

Derechology and the AskHillel AI don't eliminate the need for judgment, nor do they force everyone to agree on a single, rigid definition of morality. Different judges may still reach different conclusions.

However, derechology's profound impact is that it narrows the scope of that flexibility (or "chaos") dramatically. Instead of vague appeals to "justice" or hidden ideological biases, it requires judges to:

  • Declare their ethical premises: Which values are being prioritized?

  • Justify their triage: Why did one value override another?

  • Explain their reasoning transparently: How did contextual amplifiers play a role?

This means that appeals are no longer just about legal technicalities or ideological reversals. They become about critiquing the explicit moral reasoning itself.  An appeals court would have to provide compelling ethical reasons to discard a lower court's value weightings, forcing a higher level of accountability and intellectual rigor. And also judges will be expected to surface and define the values they identified and weighted, making their rulings more transparent. The AskHillel/derechology system provides a universal grammar to map any and all values to a common set that can be examined and prioritized.

This transforms legal judgment from an act of personal authority into an act of accountable moral reasoning. It offers a path to rebuild public trust in legal systems, make international law more coherent, and even guide the ethical decision-making of AI.

It is, in effect, a derechological jurisprudence – a way to infuse legal reasoning with the structured integrity and profound humility that has been missing for too long.

And the idea that a single framework can help solve so many foundational problems in so many different philosophical fields is nothing short of astounding. 





Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

   
 

 

Monday, August 04, 2025


Yesterday I wrote about an article in Educational Philosophy and Theory in which a group of academics presented different essays that all agreed on the same thing: Israel is fundamentally evil, and the war in Gaza is the most important moral issue of our time. There was no dissent, no uncertainty, and no acknowledgment of complexity—just a chorus of moral condemnation dressed up as diversity of perspective.

What I didn’t fully articulate is how these essays reflect a deeper crisis in education: the replacement of critical thinking with ideological performance. These supposed educators are not reasoning. They are not testing ideas. They are adopting a narrative and policing allegiance to it. And they are justifying this as morally urgent.

In short, they are doing exactly what educators should not do.

This isn't just happening in elite academic journals. It’s becoming the norm in public education as well. In the United States, what is taught in red-state schools is increasingly different from what is taught in blue-state schools. In many Western school systems—especially in the U.S. and Europe—decolonial theory, Marxist frameworks, and identity-based politics are presented not as topics for debate but as moral baselines.

The loss of factual accuracy is not the biggest problem. It is that the students are not learning to think for themselves. They are being force-fed simplistic, and often wrong, ideas as moral. 

What passes for debate today is often just factional disagreement within a shared ideological frame. The EPAT essays, for instance, were not debating whether Israel might be justified in defending itself, but whether Israel’s supposed crimes reach the level of genocide or not. That is not debate. That’s like arguing whether a man abused his wife emotionally or physically—without asking whether he did it at all, or whether she might have attacked him first.

We need a better framework. And that’s where the AskHillel model of ethical reasoning comes in.

AskHillel offers a structured, secularized ethical system built on three tiers:

🔹 Level 1: Core Ethical Anchors: These are universal, non-negotiable values that frame all moral discourse:
  • Human Life – protection of life and well-being

  • Dignity – every person has inherent worth

  • Truth – honesty, accuracy, and intellectual integrity

  • Justice – fairness, both procedural and substantive

  • Responsibility – mutual care and accountability

🔸 Level 2: Primary Civic Duties: These are the active obligations of ethical citizenship:

  • Do Not Enable Harm – prevent systems that cause or conceal damage

  • Care for the Vulnerable – active support of those at risk

  • Responsible Speech – avoid dehumanizing or dishonest rhetoric

  • Support Family and Community – recognize embedded roles and duties

  • Care for the Self – health and self-respect as public goods

⚖️ Level 3: Contextual Amplifiers: These shape tone, restraint, and wisdom in difficult situations:

  • Benefit of the Doubt – generosity in interpreting others

  • Beyond the Rule – ethical flexibility beyond minimal compliance

  • Moral Modesty – humility and acknowledgment of uncertainty

  • Gratitude – awareness of moral debts and context

  • Learning as Duty – curiosity and intellectual growth as ethical imperatives

This approach changes everything.

Rather than fighting over outcomes or partisan identities, classroom debate would focus on what values are in play, and how they were applied. Did each side uphold its stated values? Did they abandon one to serve another? Was that justified?

Students can learn to trace hidden values, not just judge surface opinions. For example:

  • In studying slavery and segregation, don’t just say the South was wrong. Ask: What values did the South claim to uphold—order, law, culture—and how do those values compare to justice and dignity?

  • In studying protest movements: When does loyalty to community outweigh personal conscience, and when must that loyalty be broken?

  • In studying global conflicts: What is the line between national defense and collective punishment? What does “truth” mean when both sides claim it?

Students naturally gravitate toward the better moral path when given the chance to think in value terms - but they also gain respect for the structure of opposing arguments. And nearly every historical conflict is a conflict of values.

Even the worst regimes in history cloaked themselves in values:

  • Nazi Germany justified itself with appeals to national pride and racial health.

  • The Soviet Union claimed to uphold worker dignity and economic fairness.

Instead of dismissing them as irrational evil, we should help students analyze how seemingly noble values, when unmoored from other ethical anchors, can be twisted into justifications for atrocity.

This isn’t just about history. Students deal with value conflicts every day:

  • Do I go home for dinner as my parents asked, or keep playing with my friends?

  • Should I defend a friend with unpopular views, or distance myself to avoid social blowback?

When students learn that every decision is a balance of values, they develop ethical literacy - a lifelong skill more powerful than any ideology. They also learn to make better decisions and advocate for themselves more clearly.

AskHillel also allows for cultural and moral pluralism. Different communities may prioritize different values. That’s fine, as long as none of those values violate core ethical anchors like dignity and life.

Students can be taught to respect others’ frameworks without losing confidence in their own. This opens the door to real dialogue—not just tolerance, but moral conversation.

Some classical education theorists have proposed cultivating individual virtues like courage or wisdom. But AskHillel is different.

Virtue education centers on personal growthAskHillel centers on relational obligation - how you affect and answer to others: your family, your community, your country, and the world.

It doesn’t just ask, What kind of person are you becoming? It asks, Whom do you owe? What must you uphold?

This is a better moral foundation for education—because it teaches responsibility before pride, clarity before ideology, and accountability before performance.

Without a coherent moral framework, students are left vulnerable - to propaganda, peer pressure, and moral confusion. They are told what to believe without being shown how to reason. They are punished for dissent without being taught how to argue.

AskHillel offers a solution: a values-based, relational responsibility system that scales from personal life to global politics. It is the foundation of an education system that builds thinkers, not followers—and moral adults, not ideological weapons.

We need this in classrooms now.








Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

   
 

 

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