At a time when I thought it obvious that nothing else matters like “who shall live and who shall die” — at a time like Rosh Hashanah — I learned that “nothing else matters” means something else to Steve Bannon and to the Jewish attorney general of Michigan, Dana Nessel.
To Steve Bannon, nothing else matters except AI data centers. To the Jewish attorney general of Michigan, nothing Jewish matters at all.
Bannon, the convicted and pardoned former chief strategist for President Trump, thinks that AI and data centers are the world’s worst danger. Bannon is willing to make common cause with his political enemies, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, to get the data center challenge right. “If we don’t get this right,” says Bannon, “none of that other stuff is going to matter. I have not seen any issue in modern American life at the populist level that unites disparate elements of our country more than this” (quoted in the Wall Street Journal).
For the Jewish attorney general of Michigan, Dana Nessel, there is still a greater danger: the existence of the Jewish people and the land of Israel. She told a private meeting of Jewish Democrats that Jews and Israel should commit suicide in order to save the world (you read that right). Nessel said, as reported in Detroit News:
“It is perhaps up to us now to follow in her (Queen Esther’s) path and sacrifice the comfort, safety and security and even the very future of our people in exchange for the opportunity to save the rest of humanity. What good is defending the historic homeland of our ancestors and demanding that candidates acknowledge its right to exist if the planet upon which it rests is no longer inhabitable?”
Can one imagine a more self-abasing Jewish claim? No other people or country should stop believing in and fighting for its existence. Only Jews, only Israel, says Nessel. There is a term I don’t use because it is almost always a pejorative, but is “self-hating Jew” appropriate for Dana Nessel? No question is her ignorance: Queen Esther was prepared to risk her life in order to save her people, not to end her people.
In attendance at this private meeting with Jewish Democrats during Nessel’s speech was a very non-private person, Michigan’s US Senate Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed. He doesn’t believe in Israel’s right to exist. Now a prominent Jewish politician tells him he’s right. Ouch!
I cannot imagine any speech in Jewish life that could unify disparate elements of the Jewish people in repulsion than Dana Nessel’s recommendation that her people and her people’s land drop dead. Because . . . nothing else matters if the planet is endangered.
Such a jarring and frankly inconceivable note, especially on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the ultimate time of hope for a riper future.
How can any Jew, let alone a state attorney general, tell Jews on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, when our fate is in the hands of our Creator, that nothing matters more than surrendering our body and soul?
We are not in the hands of Steve Bannon or of Dana Nessel, even though Bannon’s concern about immense water and electricity needs for data centers is on target as much as Nessel is off target. Rosh Hashanah is the time — the opportunity — to focus on what really does matter.
Our health.
Our people’s safety.
Our country’s destiny, and the fate of Israel and Ukraine, both at war.
Our spiritual and ethical lapses.
Our personal methods of teshuvah — of repairing what we’ve broken.
Our collective methods of protecting the land of Israel and its eight million Jewish and two million non-Jewish inhabitants from the designs of Hamas, of Hezbollah, of Iran — and from the likes of Dana Nessel and Abdul El-Sayed.
Rosh Hashanah, not Passover, is the universal Jewish holiday. Passover marks the beginning of the Jewish people, not the hope of liberation for humanity. That is reserved for Rosh Hashanah, when all are judged, Jew and non-Jew.
Among the recipients of my Rosh Hashanah greetings are non-Jewish friends. I explain to them that Jews believe that everyone is judged on Rosh Hashanah, and I don’t expect non-Jews to alter their own religion in order to believe this, but nonetheless I extend my good wishes to them for a good year ahead. It is always appreciated.
Because as far as ultimates go, nothing else matters but our standing in the eyes of our Creator.
As for penultimates, Dana Nessel might consider the technological prowess of Israel and its potential to invent the devices and devise best practices that will preserve our planet. Since Nessel apparently likes to refer to Biblical personalities, albeit inaccurately, she would find a more relevant figure in Noah. After the flood that destroyed humanity, G-d said: “I will not further curse the ground because of man . . . All the days of the earth, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease” (Genesis 8:21-22).
Noah believed in the future of the planet, and saved the smallest remnant to make sure it would be repopulated. Noah did not despair, as Dana Nessel does. Rabbi Israel Salanter said: the worst disease is despair.
Rosh Hashanah is our opportunity to transcend despair, to affirm the indispensable contributions of our people to humanity, to sustain and shape the State of Israel on the Holy Land to be a light unto the nations.
That is the ultimate stake in the struggle over Israel today. Enemies of Israel would emasculate the ultimate hope that Israel represents. Those who believe in the power of Rosh Hashanah affirm it, and thereby affirm the future of the planet and of all humanity.
© IJN 2026
