Steelman · slot C
When Torah study becomes a war crime
A religious-liberty lawyer would argue —Read the actual Canadian complaints. A synagogue is accused because congregants tied tzitzit for lone soldiers. A school is accused because it encourages students to continue Judaic studies in Israeli yeshivot. A congregation is accused because its memorial book includes a prayer for fallen soldiers recited on Yom Kippur and Shemini Atzeret. These are not military activities; they are the ordinary substance of observant Jewish life — prayer, religious education, memorializing the dead. Reclassifying them as "aiding and abetting" turns the tax code and the human-rights apparatus into instruments for policing Jewish ritual itself. Any legal regime in which reciting Yizkor or studying Talmud in Jerusalem is presumptive evidence of complicity in war crimes is, by definition, a regime that has criminalized the practice of Judaism.