As year 2024 begins, wars are raging in Africa, Israel and Gaza and Ukraine. These are indeed explosive and most troubling. In addition, the US presidential race has begun, with two diametrically opposed political parties. The isolationist tilt of some in the Republican Party is worrisome. This will be a “make-or-break year for the post-1945 world order.” The new dynamic is one of increasing instability. The Economist argues that “In the 1990s many countries aspired to a self-reinforcing cycle of freedom, market economics and rules-based globalization. Now there is an unpredictable cycle of populism, interventionist economics and transactional globalization. As a result, three threats loom in 2024.”

David is crowned king in Hebron but must deal with the civil war orchestrated by Abner.

A new poll from YouGov/The Economist points out that young Americans appear to be remarkably ignorant about one of modern history’s greatest crimes. Some 20% of respondents aged 18-29 think that the Holocaust is a myth, compared with 8% of those aged 30-44. An additional 30% of young Americans said they do not know whether the Holocaust is a myth. “Many respondents espouse the canard that Jews wield too much power in America: young people are nearly five times more likely to think this than are those aged 65 and older.”

God’s discipline of David re-energizes his walk with God and Saul dies on Mt. Gilboa.

I have been reading Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik’s Providence and Power: Ten Portraits in Jewish Statesmanship. It is a remarkable read, for in it he surveys the leadership qualities of King David, Queen Esther, Benjamin Disraeli and Abraham Lincoln, among others. He makes two profound observations that are so helpful for 2024

Saul hits his spiritual bottom by going to a medium for counsel and David hits his spiritual bottom by his plans to join the Philistines in a war against his own people.

What motivates the rulers of Iran? Why do they invest billions of dollars in arming themselves and their proxies (e.g., Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis of Yemen, etc.) against Israel? Is it simply to destroy the growing acceptance of Israel by several Arab nations? Was the 7 October genocidal attack designed to thwart the seemingly imminent recognition by Saudi Arabia of Israel? Or was it something more egregious, more dastardly?

In his confrontation with Nabal, God uses Abigail to teach David to trust God to deal with his enemies, not with vengeance but with justice.

Columnist Daniel Henninger correctly observes that “There was a time when most American schoolchildren had a functioning knowledge of the Holocaust and the camps. No longer. Universities’ hiring and enabling of activist left-wing professors—proponents of the anti-Israel movement called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions—has affected a generation of students. A Quinnipiac poll found 51% of Democrats younger than 35 don’t support sending military aid to Israel after Hamas’s attack.”

The ethical case against abortion rests on the proposition that life begins at conception—and that killing a baby in the womb is ethically wrong. The life of the baby in the womb is as valuable in the eyes of God as that of the mother. However, since the 1970s, abortion has been defended on the grounds of privacy and bodily autonomy: “my body, my choice.” The legal and philosophical debates that culminated in Roe v. Wade (1973) considered abortion in terms of competing rights: the woman’s right to control her body against the baby’s right not to be killed.