Every year, on the day of atonement, the ancient Hebrews would take a goat, lay upon it all the guilt and misdeeds of the community, and cast it out into the wilderness alone, blameless, and burdened with sins that were not its own. Isabel Wilkerson, in the book Caste, traces how this ritual is ever present and evolving. The scapegoat transformed from a sacrificial animal into a people, designated, generation after generation, to absorb the anxieties, failures, and moral debts of a dominant culture so that everyone else could move forward feeling clean. The scapegoat doesn’t create the community’s sins…

The Israel Day Parade in NYC ‘s theme, “Proud Americans, Proud Zionists,” is a political statement, not solely a celebration of Jewish culture. And no elected official should be compelled to endorse a political position simply because the calendar approaches a certain date. I believe identifying as a Zionist is a contested political identity, rather than an ethnic or religious descriptor. You can be Jewish without being Zionist (many are, historically and today), and you can be Zionist without being Jewish (many Christian Zionists are). That alone disqualifies it as an ethnic or religious descriptor. Mamdani was transparent. He said…