The Beat

Progressive Watch

In the Left’s race to demonize Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, Jewish voices have been notably shrill, with a recent open letter by Jewish progressives accusing the judge of threatening the “health, safety, and lives of countless individuals.”

But first prize goes to Ibram Kendi, a professor of history and author of How to Be an Anti-Racist. He managed to turn Barrett’s own adoption of two children from Haiti into an act of possible racism: “Some White colonizers ‘adopted’ Black children,” he tweeted. “They ‘civilized’ these ‘savage’ children in the ‘superior’ ways of White people while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial. And whether this is Barrett or not is not the point. It is a belief that too many White people have: if they have or adopt a child of color, they can’t be racist.”

Friends in High Places

Call it the fruits of diplomacy. First came the backstory to the Middle East deal, and now comes a behind-the-scenes of your arba minim. Avi Berkowitz holds a position known as “Special Representative for International Negotiations,” which primarily entails overseeing negotiations in the Middle East, such as the recent normalization talks between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain.

Last July, however, Berkowitz found himself involved in talks of a completely different nature, after he was asked to take care of the supply of esrogim to the United States ahead of Succos. An official in the White House tells Mishpacha that in July, Satmar askan Rabbi Moshe Duvid Niederman, based in New York, turned to Berkowitz to explain that there was a problem this year with the esrog supply. Ordinarily some 75,000 to 100,000 esrogim are imported from Italy, but due to COVID travel restrictions, mashgichim couldn’t fly to Italy to check them. Without adequate hashgachah, the esrogim could not be shipped.