As the rabbinic moral voice, it's important to know when to take risks, putting everything on the line for our values, and when to toss those values out the window and bend the knee to our handsome new savior President Donald Trump.

Right now, it's time to fold like the three corners of a hamentashen.

In celebration of Purim, T'ruah is rolling out Project T'ruah '25!

Aside from advocating for the human rights of Teslas, here's what we have planned:

"[Purim] reminds us that even when things seem very bleak, our ability to name the absurd and to respond with laughter is one of our greatest treasures." -Rabbi Ruhi Sophia Motzkin Rubenstein

Don't miss the jokes getting cut off at the bottom! View it in your web browser

We're taking a page out of President Trump's book and renaming places whatever we want!

Breaking News: ADL Urges Calm After Tucker Carlson Leads Crowd in Chanting “Heil Hitler”

Jonathan Greenblatt posts on X (formerly a successful website called Twitter):

“It seems likely these marchers were merely pointing out that given the German climate, it sometimes hailed on Hitler. Who even knows if they meant Adolf Hitler? Maybe it was Britney Hitler. That being the case, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath.”

New policies to make synagogues more efficient include:

In school, you may have learned about Labor Zionism, Political Zionism, and Religious Zionism. For decades, Liberal or Progressive Zionism has argued for a place at the table. But today, with the very meaning of Zionism under contention, there has been a proliferation of new forms and ideas about Zionism–a veritable blooming of a thousand deserts.

Following on the success of T’ruah’s previous “Very Brief Guides,” we’re pleased to bring you this compact, accessible volume to help you navigate the confusing minefield of discourse. Highlights include:

• Culinary Zionism: It’s not really an ideology, man. I’m just here for the really good hummus and falafel. 
   
• Micro-dosing Zionism: For the Zionist-inclined but overwhelmed among us. Micro-dosing Zionists allow themselves no more than one news article about Israel per week and one argument about Israel per month. This low dosage prevents withdrawal symptoms (and ostracism from the larger community) without overloading the Zionism receptors in the brain.
  
  
• Hallucinogenic Zionism: Practitioners of this school of Zionism maintain their belief in patently impossible things, like a humane occupation or a military solution to a political problem. It relies heavily on the use of mind-altering substances like mushrooms, nationalism, and youth groups.
   
• Ziagnosticism: For people who would never declare themselves full-throated anti-Zionists but definitely don’t see themselves as Zionists. Ziagnostics are perfectly comfortable around both Zionists and anti-Zionists, as long as no one ever talks about Zionism. 
   
• Zinism: Zinism celebrates Israel’s production of semi-sweet white wine as a major contribution to worldwide civilization. Either that, or the power of typoes.

Breaking News: Bari Weiss Gently Rebukes Arsonist Who Destroyed Synagogue

Bari Weiss on X (the site formerly known as Twitter, which was always a little stressful but never this racist and antisemitic):

"While we appreciate your attempt at a solidarity fireworks display, please understand that in this time of heightened tension, Jews are justifiably concerned when their synagogue burns down. We’d be happy to work with you to offer alternative ways to show your allyship with the Jewish people."

Watch here.

Here at Project T’ruah ‘25, we’re committed to supporting our allies, especially Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Keeping him out of jail means we need to keep him in office!

To do that, we’ve come up with a whole new slew of ways to retain Bibi’s hold on the Israeli electorate:

• Call a vote of “No Confidence” on the Knesset before they do it to him.
   
• Introduce “Bacon Bissli.”
   
• Officially declare all of Israel’s sidewalks to be free and legal parking.
  
• “Hey, what if we started a war with Burkina Faso?”
   
• Threaten to replace him with his even more reviled wife Sara.
   
• “OK, OK, Israel, you can have a pony!”
   
• All Haredim now required to serve… not in the military, in state-mandated tennis.
   
• Fauda’s back, but now it’s a sitcom!
   
• Form and head the “Balagan Party,” which will always have an unbeatable majority in Israel. 

Breaking News: Project T'ruah '25 Condemns Rabbi Jill Jacobs for Reaching for Book on High Shelf

Project T'ruah '25 posts on X (formerly Twitter but now a Neo-Nazi hotbed and what are we supposed to do? Use Bluesky?!):

"Unbelievable. Radical leftists reaching for things on high shelves clearly evokes Nazism. Antisemitism at its worst."

Any good authoritarian knows that to control people you need to control arts and culture. Here are some...

• Length: You may have heard that Jesse Eisenberg, who was born and raised Jewish, also made a movie involving the Shoah that even filmed on location in Majdanek, but it was deemed unworthy of a Best Picture nomination for being only 1 hour 29 minutes long. My movie has a 3 hour 35 minute runtime, which is how you know that it’s worthy. Shakespeare may have written that brevity is the soul of wit, but he doesn’t have an Oscar, does he? 
   
• Trauma: To make an Oscar movie, you need trauma, and it doesn’t matter if it’s yours, your family’s, or even if you have any insight into the lived experiences of those you seek to represent. All you need is an understanding that things were Sad and thus Heavy. Heavy themes bring heavy trophies.
   
• Music: Make the score harsh and loud (albeit gorgeous) so as not to confuse any audiences with even a little bit of subtlety.  
   
• Casting: In the age of Google Translate and Respeecher, you need not even write in a language that you know, or hire actors whose pronunciations wouldn’t require tweaking through AI in post-production. What matters is that you approach filmmaking with an Optimization Mindset, casting at least one actor who has won the Oscar for a similar role and an actress with at least one nomination and one Star War under her belt. If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to attract one of Taylor Swift’s ex-boyfriends, but feel free to settle for an actor who dated Dua Lipa. 
   
• More Trauma: It is crucial to optimize suffering, and to throw tragedies at your characters to a degree that feels gratuitous. If audiences want a grounded experience, they can watch a documentary. Throw every horrific thing that could possibly happen to a person from Buchenwald to heroin addiction to sexual assault to famine-induced osteoporosis to trauma-induced mutism to watching a French menage-a-tois film at a porn house to accidental overdose to coitus on heroin to American capitalism to partying with Italians.

Pssst. Are you still there? OK, hopefully the government officials spying on us didn't read down this far. Just to hedge our bets, we're going to try appealing to God one last time.

Adar 14, 5785

Dear God,

We write to You today as a group of concerned Jews to urge You to take action now to stop President Trump from destroying democracy and the planet. 

Over the past month, Trump has shown complete disregard for U.S. and international law. He has attacked the rights of millions. His administration continues to demonize many minority groups, including Your own personal Chosen People. 

God, these actions fly in the face of Your stated values. 

The situation demands Your prompt response. We have appealed to You before, but have not had an official reply from Your office in over 2,400 years. That sort of timeline is unacceptable. 

You must take action now before the situation worsens. We look to you for a solution, whether You decide to:

• bring a new prophet to lead us to freedom, 
• miraculously give Democratic senators spines, or
• rain down a plague of frogs across Washington DC and Mar-a-Lago. 

We urge You not to choose the option where You flood everything and start over from scratch. 

We hope that You will take Your position as Master of All Worlds seriously and take action now to save us from all the bad things.

You are literally our only hope (lol).  

Sincerely,

T'ruah's Purim newsletter is brought to you by: Shira Danan, Rabbi Marisa James, Rob Kutner, Orli Matlow, Rabbi Lev Meirowitz Nelson, and Rabbi Ruhi Sophia Motzkin Rubenstein. 

P.S. Enjoyed the foreign sensation of laughter? Want more? One of our esteemed writers, Rob Kutner, has a hilarious new book out now from Simon & Schuster and it's on one of your favorite topics: Jews! 

Order "The Jews: 5,000 Years and Counting" here!