*For those of you who read my personal posts on Facebook, my apologies as you may have read a part of this already.

On Tuesday, I was grateful for an opportunity to celebrate at the wedding of the son of dear friends. The demands of the moment for those of us who have communal responsibilities can be overwhelming, so any chance In a time of such darkness to find simcha - celebration - and to grab it, to hold on for dear life, is essential.

During the chuppah (ceremony) I was in touch with a colleague whose good friend was murdered in the Sydney terror attack just two days before, and who was watching his funeral at that moment. I couldn’t speak but I texted with him. Later, as I was walking over to dance with the groom and his friends, I passed a fellow native Torontonian who I hadn’t seen in many years.

My first words to her were ‘Hello!’ and ‘Mazal tov!’ She turned and smiled as she recognized me. And then, I told her how awed and sorrowful I was at the sacrifice and loss of her son-in-law, who fell last year, fighting in Gaza, defending his people and his family.

The simple joys that we used to take for granted are challenged every minute by the tide and the consequences of hatred and malevolence all around us. This may be something I can overcome, but the theft, the ripping away of our joy, is something I cannot and will not ever forgive.

And so I’m left with an anger I know is useful, but also dangerous. Dangerous because it can become all-consuming and debilitating, and most importantly it can lead to irrational decision making. Useful because it is singularly capable of motivation and determination, and if there was ever a time where these are needed, it is now.

I choose determination. I choose effectiveness. Af Al Pi Ken - despite all this - I’ll celebrate, and then get back to work to do my small part to build, defend and protect the Jewish future.

Part of being effective is shedding illusions and self deception. So I’ll put it plainly. If you had any doubt about the environment of violent hatred being fostered worldwide against the Jewish people, you are either sticking your fingers in your ears, closing your eyes and singing ‘lalalala I can’t hear you!’ as the bullets and firebombs fly, or you’re enabling those who actively seek our destruction.

Of those in the latter category, there are either ‘fellow travelers’, what the Bolsheviks used to call a ‘poputchik’, an active enabler of and participant in their bloody strategy, or ‘useful idiots’ as (likely) Josef Stalin used to describe those ‘innocent sentimentalists’ who could be relied upon as apologists for the worst manifestations of his global strategy of totalitarian rule or domination.

Why do I use these Soviet terms? Because as the brilliant Isabella Tabarovsky has demonstrated in much of her research, the roots of much of today's anti-Jewish hatred and anti-Zionism is rooted as early as 1919 in Soviet doctrine and propaganda. The campaign in the UN culminating in the indelible stain of the ‘Zionism is Racism’ resolution, shamefully adopted by the General Assembly 50 years ago last month; the three generations of suborned and collaborative academia; the 2001 Durban Conference and its follow ups at which Iran took up the banner of the crumbling Soviets and fostered the Red-Green alliance of Islamists and the emerging anti-Zionist ‘new’ socialist doctrine - all of these simply manifest ancient hatred in new clothes, but they are all deadly.

A young scholar by the name of Adam Louis-Klein is doing some critical work defining and clarifying the nature of this hatred, and the blood libels fueling it. As you know, I have written extensively about the genocide blood libel - the one you may have heard as I did at village and town council meetings in Rockland, by the self same ceasefire demanders who have been conspicuously silent since Hamas started killing their own after the fighting stopped upon the return of the hostages. Louis-Klein identifies the two other libels - colonialism and apartheid - which leverage the Soviet antecedents of anti-Jewish and anti-Western incitement placed in the ‘new’ clothes of the Tik Tok generation.

None of this is to absolve the grotesque and equally dangerous incitement from the political right. A few weeks ago I listened to Senator Ted Cruz in Washington as he raised alarms about the increasing anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist rhetoric from the likes of Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and others who enable them like the leadership of the Heritage Foundation. They are dangerous, and they have also demonstrated violent, deadly intent against us.

As well, the red herring often thrown at those of us who identify and call out this incitement is that we are apologists for Prime Minister Netanyahu or ministers in his government like Smotrich or Ben Gvir. Utter nonsense. There is a robust and critical discourse going on in Israel right now, and little of it is flattering to the current government. There is a generation of articulate young voters and leaders who have spent two years putting their lives on the line for their people and it is an insult to their intelligence and their sacrifice to say that they have done so on the altar of a particular government or leader. The Israeli electorate will render its judgement within a year.

But the bloodlust of the jihadists on Bondi beach, the shooters in Washington and Manchester, the firebombers in Toronto, the pogromists in Amsterdam, or the stabbers in Brooklyn will remain no matter who is in charge. The implications of ‘Globalize the Intifada’ will be felt and must be reckoned with regardless of which way the Israeli government leans. The masked accomplices and cheerleaders on our streets will do as they have done for generations even with a complete change in government in Israel.

I’ve been confronting them for almost 40 years. When they reject ANY Jewish sovereign presence in the Jewish homeland; when they march against and threaten those who have the temerity to support Jewish self determination in Israel - in front our own synagogues and schools; when they arrogate in ignorance or with malign intent the right to define who and what we are, or what discrimination against us looks like, they are acting and inciting to harm or destroy us, and they must be treated as such with every legal means at our disposal. So call it out. In person, online, wherever it manifests.

As we sat down at the wedding, and I was doing my best to redirect my thoughts and feelings back to the bride and groom, my beautiful wife pointed out to me that we are still here and we still celebrate and we still rise above. We don’t only choose determination, we also choose simcha - joy, even when they try to take it away from us.

That is our superpower: Resilience.