Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #207 (5/16/2026): ABRAHAM FOXMAN
This Rabbinical Reflection first aired May 16, 2026 on the Dave’s Gone By video podcast.
Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflections are heard on the long-running Dave’s Gone By radio/video podcast program (davesgoneby.com) and then archived as text and audio on the Rebbe’s blog, Shalomdammit.com, where a transcript of this Reflection may be read.
Rabbi Sol is also the creator of the stage show, “Shalom Dammit! An Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon,” which played in NYC in Nov. 2011 and Aug. 2012.
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More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
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TRANSCRIPT:
RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #207 (5/16/2026): Abraham Foxman
(c)2026 David Lefkowitz. aired May 16, 2026 on Dave’s Gone By.
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, with a Rabbinical Reflection for mid-May 2026.
Baruch Dayan HaEmet Avraham Chanoch Hanach Fuksman, which is a lot of names to say goodbye to Abraham Foxman, for 30 years the indefatigable head of the Anti-Defamation League, the ADL.
Now before the Israel-bashers chime in, please don’t confuse the ADL for AIPAC. AIPAC lobbies for money from American politicians to keep Israel safe, secure, and on the map. The ADL calls out the kind of idiots who bitch about AIPAC. The ADL is there to monitor anti-Semitism and torchlight it before it becomes Germany 1933.
Founded in 1913, the ADL is an off-shoot of the B’nai Brith – and if you’ve ever had a brith, you know how painful that can be. Thank God for the B’nai Brith because it’s an organization devoted to protecting Jews and the Jewish homeland, Israel. The Anti-Defamation League is exactly what its name promises: taking people to task when they do or say racist things affecting the Jewish people.
That was Abraham Foxman’s job for 30 years. Trained in the law, Foxy would hear some terrible comment by a politician, or a great actor, or Mel Gibson, and he’d be there to say “watch your fucking mouth.” (Maybe not in those words.) With his gift of persuasion, Foxman would guilt the guilty party into apologizing and admitting the error of their ways, or at least pretending to, for the sake of public relations.
More than just catching and punishing people, Foxman truly wanted our enemies to realize the harm they were doing and make them see our side of story. We find a great example of this in a column earlier this year in the Jewish Daily Forward. It covers Foxman’s prickly friendship with another recent dead guy, Jesse Jackson. When he ran for president, Jackson might’ve garnered sizable Jewish support: he was a liberal, a friend of MLK, a voice for the underclass. But Jesse got frustrated by the bureaucracy of New York politics and was heard calling the Big Apple “Hymietown” – which is a nicer way of saying “Kiketown.” Just the way “schvartzetown” is a nicer way of saying . . . Well, anyway, the media picked up Jackson’s racial slur, not to mention his buddy-buddyship with Louis Farrakhan, and now not only wouldn’t Jews vote Jackson for president, they wouldn’t even trust him as a Shabbos goy.
So, Abraham Foxman let Jackson have it – which started a dialogue, which led to years of a grudging mutual respect and Jackson paying attention to and often supporting the Jewish community. Was he perfect? No. Are you perfect? No. Am I perfect? (pause) Was Abraham Foxman perfect? Of course not. It’s easy to overreact when someone in a pissy mood blurts a slur. However, hate speech is a slippery slope, and more power to the ADL for throwing down a little gravel to impede the slide.
How sad it is that Foxman died at a time when we need him most: when social media has brainwashed a generation of college students to despise Israel, when every musical micro-talent spouts Hamas talking points better than their own shitty navel-gazing lyrics, when the New York Times – always suspect when it came to Eretz Yisroel – falls all over itself printing false narratives for liberals to immerse themselves in a Gaza pity party.
Jonathan Greenblatt is the new CEO of the ADL (actually, not so new; he’s been running it since Foxman retired a decade ago), and I commend him for filling his predecessor’s big shoes in a quieter way. But silence isn’t always golden, and while Abe Foxman helped bring the right wing under Israel’s chuppah, the progressive left has left the altar and thrown itself into the arms of Hezbollah. I don’t think Foxman’s turning in his grave (because he’s a big guy and his stomach would get blocked by the coffin lid), but I’m sure he’d have much to say about the state of the world and the state of Israel. If only we could still listen.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches, in Great Neck, New York. Alav HaShalom.
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