HALAKHIC ATTITUDES TOWARD IMMUNIZATION

 

 Before we specifically address the case, our discussion will touch on a number of issues:

 1. May one expose himself to the dangers of inoculation? 

2. Does the state have authority to immunize the populace? 

3. Is the physician or health authority obligated to warn the populace of the possible dangers of vaccination? 

4. If a direct cause-effect relationship between the injection and the disease has been statistically established, can the physician be held negligent for administering the first injection?

DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD 

The halakhic principle forbidding one to place himself in danger is a double-edged sword; it obligates one to actively guard his health, yet at the same time limits the use of dangerous medications, medical experimentation, and unsubstantiated medical practices. The law determines that one may place himself in danger to avoid a greater one, only if the efficacy of the dangerous treatment has been adequately proven.

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein ruled that a dangerous medical practice is permissible only "when the doctors ascertain that at least half of the patients with this disease were cured by this remedy.

 In certain instances one may endanger or even forfeit his life. For example, Rabbi Unterman noted that while no explicit permission is found in the Mishneh Torah or Shulhan Arukh for one to voluntarily give his life to save the community, nonetheless, he concluded that such action is permissible. Many have discussed this issue in context of war and concluded that wartime dangers are unlike other dangers; halakhah rules that endangering oneself to fight for Israel is not only permissible, but is a great mitzvah and privilege. The question facing us is: Does the duty to avoid danger obligate administering vaccines that will definitely harm a given percent of the population in order to save the majority from disease; or does this duty forbid use of these vaccines due to the inevitable damage caused to the few?

 

A VERY IMPORTANT READ FOR OUR CHALLENGING TIMES:

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54694fa6e4b0eaec4530f99d/t/5cacfc68c830256c3b25acb0/1554840682154/HALAKHIC+ATTITUDES+TOWARD+IMMUNIZATION.pdf

Religion’s role is to remind us of that fact, imploring us to accept willingly and gratefully the public health advice of experts — even if it means our staying away from the pews for a while. The Supreme Court should do nothing to detract from that essential objective.

 

God prefers parishioners who aren’t dead

The most essential service we clergy can provide is to help people survive until next Shabbat -- or to whenever the vaccine brings immunity. Nothing else matters

Thousands attend the wedding of the grandson of Satmar Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum in Brooklyn on November 8, 2020.

In a surprising and reckless move, last week, the US Supreme Court sided with conservative religious groups in scrapping New York State’s Covid attendance limitations. As a religious leader, I strongly oppose that decision.

For those of us who work in religious institutions, there is no question that we deliver essential services, but my synagogue does not need to be physically open for that to be the case. 

Congregations with integrity have understood that our most essential purpose is in saving and enhancing lives. We were alerted to some of the dangers unique to our ilk early on in the crisis, when a church choir rehearsal in Skagit County, WA led to the infection of 53 members.

There was something about a lot of people praying together that was getting them sick.

But despite this, there are some clergy who have led their congregations astray and into the pit of disease and death, by flouting protocols and reopening prematurely, sometimes even breaking the law, and encouraging their congregants to shun masks and spacing when it is common knowledge that crowded church services can be super-spreading events.

Like that Tampa, Florida pastor who was arrested in April for defying the authorities by holding services for hundreds of parishioners. Or the pastor in San Antonio, who later apologized for encouraging hugging at his church, resulting in at least 50 cases of the coronavirus. Or the Louisiana pastor who was arrested for defying stay-at-home orders after holding live services for hundreds of people. Or the church in Seoul, South Korea, that flouted regulations and was later found to be linked to more than 5,200 cases.

It’s a Jewish problem too. Like that super-spreader Hasidic funeral in Brooklyn that drew 2,500 people. And then there was Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky in Israel, who said that yeshiva students should stop being screened because “it could lead to a mass loss of Torah study.” Then he went on to contract the virus (and recover).

Or the pastor in Maine who, after officiating at a superspreader wedding, knowingly spread it to his congregation, defiantly mocking state and CDC guidelines, stating that God wants him to expose his people to disease. He said, “I want the people of God to enjoy liberty.”

Give me liberty, or give me breath!

Well, the God I pray to prefers parishioners who are not dead.

Or the thousands who attended a California megachurch, the Grace Community Church. Pastor John MacArthur defied a state order and 6,000 – 7,000 people showed up.

“We don’t orchestrate this, MacArthur said. “This is a church. We don’t ask people to make a reservation to come to church,” he said.

Well, maybe they should. Many do.

“We opened the doors,” he added, “because that’s what we are, we’re a church, and we’re going to trust those people to make adult decisions about the reality of their physical and spiritual health and how that balance works for each one of them,” he said. “Nobody’s forcing anything, they’re here because they want to be here.”

They apparently believe that God wants them to be sneezing all over each other.

They clearly did not read this passage from the Talmud, and perhaps the Supreme Court needs to read it too:

If there is plague in the city, gather your feet, i.e., limit the time you spend out of the house, as it is stated in the verse: “And none of you shall go out of the opening of his house until the morning.” (Bava Kamma 60b)

The Supreme Court is encouraging misguided clergy to do precisely the opposite, and to lead their trusting congregants off a cliff.

Leviticus 18 teaches:

 וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם אֶת-חֻקֹּתַי וְאֶת-מִשְׁפָּטַי, אֲשֶׁר יַעֲשֶׂה אֹתָם הָאָדָם וָחַי בָּהֶם: אֲנִי, יְהוָה

Ye shall therefore keep My statutes, and My ordinances, which if a person do, they shall live by them: I am the LORD

We are told, regarding the mitzvot of the Torah, “V’chai bahem,” Life takes precedence over just about everything else in Jewish law, including Shabbat observance.

The Talmud teaches that Shabbat is holy only because we are alive to observe it. It isn’t holy in a vacuum. If a Shabbat falls in a forest and no one is there to observe it, it is irrelevant. If the coronavirus kills all of us, when Friday evening arrives, there will be no Shabbat. We “make Shabbos.” If we don’t make it, it doesn’t get made.

So preserving life takes precedence even over Shabbat observance. You are required to profane one Shabbat if that will enable you to live for many Shabbats to come.

The most essential service we can provide is to help people survive until next Shabbat — or to next March, or to whenever the vaccine brings immunity. Nothing else matters. All the rest is commentary.

With vaccines so close at hand, encouraging unnecessary risk by populating our places of worship prematurely is the equivalent of asking congregants to be like those thousands of unlucky soldiers who died on Armistice Day, when all seemed so serene on the Western Front.

We are all responsible to keep one another alive. Religion’s role is to remind us of that fact, imploring us to accept willingly and gratefully the public health advice of experts — even if it means our staying away from the pews for a while.  The Supreme Court should do nothing to detract from that essential objective.

The God I pray to wants us to stay inside, while the pandemic rages on.

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/god-prefers-parishioners-who-arent-dead/?utm_source=The+Blogs+Weekly+Highlights&utm_campaign=blogs-weekly-highlights-2020-12-03&utm_medium=email

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein On Suing Governments....

 

Midrash – Questioning Esau’s Intentions

The Tannaitic midrash halakha work from around the 3^rd century, Sifrei Bemidbar, provides explanations for the ten passages in the Torah where dots appear above letters, including our example, which Rashi quotes in his commentary to this verse:

וישקהו – נקוד עליו, ויש חולקין בדבר הזה בברייתא דספרי, יש שדרשו נקודה זו לומר שלא נשקו בכל לבו. אמר ר’ שמעון בן יוחאי הלכה היא בידוע שעשו שונא ליעקב, אלא שנכמרו רחמיו באותה שעה ונשקו בכל לבו:

וישקהו has dots above it. In the Sifrei we find a dispute about how to interpret [these dots]. Some say that the dots mean that he did not kiss him wholeheartedly. [However] Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai says, “It is a well-known halakha that Esau hates Jacob. Nevertheless, at that moment he became merciful and he kissed him wholeheartedly.”

The phrase הלכה בידוע (it is a well-known halakha) is unusual. It appears nowhere else in classical rabbinic literature and it is unclear what is “halakhic” about it.

The Inevitability of Antisemitism: R. Moshe Feinstein

Whatever Rashi or the Sifrei meant by the phrase, in modern times, people cite it as proof of the inevitability and universality of antisemitism. Consider how the prominent American halakhic authority, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein (1895-1986) interpreted the phrase in the early 1970s, when he answered a halakhic question that he had received from England.

Jews in England claimed that the government was discriminating against Jewish private schools and underfunding them, compared to government funding for other private schools. The British Jewish community considered suing the British government at the European Court for Human Rights. One rabbi in England turned to Rabbi Feinstein for his opinion about launching such a suit.

Rabbi Feinstein wrote that, in general, he supported initiatives that could lead to more government support for Jewish education:

ודאי פשוט וברור שיש להשתדל אצל הממשלה שיתמכו בבתי ספר שהיהודים יסדו לעצמן.

Certainly it is obvious that one should lobby the government to support schools established by Jews for themselves.

But his attitude to suing the British government in a European court was different:

לתבוע למשפט אשר נמצא במדינה אחרת שגם ענגלאנד שייך להם ולבוא בקובלנא לפני השופטים על השרים של ענגלאנד אשר עושים עוולה נגד היהודים ודאי יש לחוש להטלת איבה מהממשלה להיהודים שזה אפשר שחס ושלום יביא לתוצאות לא טובות בהרבה … כי צריך לידע שהשנאה לישראל מכל האומות היא גדולה גם ממלכיות שנוהגין בטובה, וכבר אמרתי על הלשון שהביא רש”י בפירוש החומש… על קרא דוישקהו אמר רשב”י הלכה היא בידוע שעשו שונא ליעקב

But we must worry that suing the government at a court in another country with which England is associated, and complaining to the judges there that the ministers in England are harming the Jews is likely to cause hatred toward Jews on the part of the government.

The result could be far worse than the original problem… For we have to realize that hatred of the Jews by all nations is actually great, even in the nations that behave well [toward Jews]. 

I have already explained concerning Rashi’s language in his Torah commentary… on the word וישקהו: Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai says: “It is a well-known halakha that Esau hates Jacob.”

דמה שייך זה להלכה, דהוא כמו שהלכה לא משתנית כך שנאת עשו ליעקב לא משתנית דאף אלו שנוהגות באופן טוב שנאתן גדולה בעצם

And why is the word halakha relevant here? It is because just as halakha never changes, so also Esau’s hatred of Jacob never changes. Even in those [nations] that behave well [toward Jews], their hatred [of Jews] is actually strong. ^[8]

https://www.thetorah.com/article/esau-hates-jacob-but-is-antisemitism-a-halakha

But in the context of a raging pandemic, we are not animated by a desire to search for allowances or dispensations. We are not interested in how many people we can legally cram into a given space. Our goal is not simply to satisfy the requirements of the state so that we can check a box. Our goal is to protect the health and well-being of every person who passes through our doors and, in turn, the health and well-being of every member of our broader community.

 

The Supreme Court’s repeal of synagogue restrictions won’t change anything for Orthodox congregations like mine

(JTA) — As the rabbi of a synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I have been keeping a close eye on pronouncements by the governor about the ever-changing New York state guidelines governing houses of worship. Since reopening in the summer, we have taken note of how quickly synagogues have had to adapt when they found themselves subject to occupancy limits of 10 or 25 people. When the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a decision about the legality of these state-imposed restrictions, we followed it with great interest. 

In last week’s split decision, the court set aside the attendance limits that Governor Cuomo had imposed on houses of worship in red and orange zones. The decision does not immunize synagogues, mosques or churches against government restrictions. It simply insists that those restrictions must not be more severe than those placed on comparable secular gatherings.

Champions of religious freedom cheered. In their view, the court had beaten back an overreaching state. But for a synagogue community like ours, the decision is largely academic. 

From the outset of this pandemic, it has been our position that while adherence to the dictates of the government is required by halakha, or Jewish law, those dictates represent a floor rather than a ceiling. In the halakhic calculus, few issues are treated more conservatively than those pertaining to public safety. That a given activity may be legal does not necessarily mean it is advisable or even permitted. Our synagogue closed before being mandated to by the government. We waited to reopen until well after the state proclaimed reopening permissible. And while the government’s occupancy limits would have allowed us to seat 100 or more people in our sanctuary, our internal guidelines restricted capacity to a fraction of that number.   

We can all agree on the need to protect the free exercise of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment.

 But in the context of a raging pandemic, we are not animated by a desire to search for allowances or dispensations. We are not interested in how many people we can legally cram into a given space. Our goal is not simply to satisfy the requirements of the state so that we can check a box. Our goal is to protect the health and well-being of every person who passes through our doors and, in turn, the health and well-being of every member of our broader community. If that requires the expenditure of more time or more funds on our part, so be it. 

As Americans, we are conditioned to think about rights. As Jews, we are also meant to think about responsibilities. Mitzvot are not good deeds; they are obligations dutifully performed by those who aspire to better the world by making it more sacred or more godly.  

 Rather than pursuing concessions from the state, we ought to be pursuing opportunities to contribute to it. For Jews, the best way to celebrate the triumph of religious freedom is to treat that freedom responsibly.

Justice Neil Gorsuch filed a separate opinion in this case in which he wrote that “[e]ven if the Constitution has taken a holiday during this pandemic, it cannot become a sabbatical.” 

 By the same token, those of us operating houses of worship cannot afford to rest for even a moment. By insisting on protocols that meet and exceed the expectations of public health officials, we can model responsible civic conduct. Maintaining these high standards represents an ongoing challenge, but we are obliged to do nothing less. 

As citizens of the United States, each of us is called upon to abide by the laws of the nation. What kind of citizen a person will be remains a question of personal preference. But in the Jewish conception, the Talmud tells us that we are charged with an affirmative requirement to be “good neighbors.” When the need arises, each of us has to make a concession for the benefit of a greater good. It’s not about how many people in our community we can fit into a service. It’s about how our people can fit service to the community into their lives. 

 

https://www.jta.org/2020/11/30/opinion/the-supreme-courts-repeal-of-synagogue-restrictions-wont-change-anything-for-orthodox-congregations-like-mine?utm_source=JTA_Maropost&utm_campaign=JTA_DB&utm_medium=email&mpweb=1161-25239-462090

"Yet some groups protested, refusing to keep their distance, marching against travel restrictions — as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom! Looking to the common good is much more than the sum of what is good for individuals. It means having a regard for all citizens and seeking to respond effectively to the needs of the least fortunate."

https://youtu.be/wIJ163IOlfY

 

In this past year of change, my mind and heart have overflowed with people. People I think of and pray for, and sometimes cry with, people with names and faces, people who died without saying goodbye to those they loved, families in difficulty, even going hungry, because there’s no work.

Sometimes, when you think globally, you can be paralyzed: There are so many places of apparently ceaseless conflict; there’s so much suffering and need. I find it helps to focus on concrete situations: You see faces looking for life and love in the reality of each person, of each people. You see hope written in the story of every nation, glorious because it’s a story of daily struggle, of lives broken in self-sacrifice. So rather than overwhelm you, it invites you to ponder and to respond with hope.

These are moments in life that can be ripe for change and conversion. Each of us has had our own “stoppage,” or if we haven’t yet, we will someday: illness, the failure of a marriage or a business, some great disappointment or betrayal. As in the Covid-19 lockdown, those moments generate a tension, a crisis that reveals what is in our hearts.

In every personal “Covid,” so to speak, in every “stoppage,” what is revealed is what needs to change: our lack of internal freedom, the idols we have been serving, the ideologies we have tried to live by, the relationships we have neglected.

When I got really sick at the age of 21, I had my first experience of limit, of pain and loneliness. It changed the way I saw life. For months, I didn’t know who I was or whether I would live or die. The doctors had no idea whether I’d make it either. I remember hugging my mother and saying, “Just tell me if I’m going to die. I got taken to a hospital by a prefect who realized mine was not the kind of flu you treat with aspirin. Straightaway they took a liter and a half of water out of my lungs, and I remained there fighting for my life. The following November they operated to take out the upper right lobe of one of the lungs. I have some sense of how people with Covid-19 feel as they struggle to breathe on a ventilator.

I remember especially two nurses from this time. I learned later that following the first examination by the doctor, after he left she told the nurses to double the dose of medication he had prescribed — basically penicillin and streptomycin — because she knew from experience I was dying. Because of her regular contact with sick people, she understood better than the doctor what they needed, and she had the courage to act on her knowledge.

They taught me what it is to use science but also to know when to go beyond it to meet particular needs. And the serious illness I lived through taught me to depend on the goodness and wisdom of others.

This theme of helping others has stayed with me these past months. In lockdown I’ve often gone in prayer to those who sought all means to save the lives of others. So many of the nurses, doctors and caregivers paid that price of love, together with  religious and ordinary people whose vocations were service. We return their love by grieving for them and honoring them.

Whether or not they were conscious of it, their choice testified to a belief: that it is better to live a shorter life serving others than a longer one resisting that call. That’s why, in many countries, people stood at their windows or on their doorsteps to applaud them in gratitude and awe. They are the saints next door, who have awakened something important in our hearts, making credible once more what we desire to instill by our preaching.

They are the antibodies to the virus of indifference. They remind us that our lives are a gift and we grow by giving of ourselves, not preserving ourselves but losing ourselves in service.

With few exceptions, governments have made great efforts to put the well-being of their people first, acting decisively to protect health and to save lives. The exceptions have been some governments that shrugged off the painful evidence of mounting deaths, with inevitable, grievous consequences. But most governments acted responsibly, imposing strict measures to contain the outbreak.

Yet some groups protested, refusing to keep their distance, marching against travel restrictions — as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom! Looking to the common good is much more than the sum of what is good for individuals. It means having a regard for all citizens and seeking to respond effectively to the needs of the least fortunate.

It is all too easy for some to take an idea — in this case, for example, personal freedom — and turn it into an ideology, creating a prism through which they judge everything.

The coronavirus crisis may seem special because it affects most of humankind. But it is special only in how visible it is. There are a thousand other crises that are just as dire, but are just far enough from some of us that we can act as if they don’t exist. Think, for example, of the wars scattered across different parts of the world; of the production and trade in weapons; of the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing poverty, hunger and lack of opportunity; of climate change. These tragedies may seem distant from us, as part of the daily news that, sadly, fails to move us to change our agendas and priorities. But like the Covid-19 crisis, they affect the whole of humanity.

Look at us now: We put on face masks to protect ourselves and others from a virus we can’t see. But what about all those other unseen viruses we need to protect ourselves from? How will we deal with the hidden pandemics of this world, the pandemics of hunger and violence and climate change?

If we are to come out of this crisis less selfish than when we went in, we have to let ourselves be touched by others’ pain. There’s a line in Friedrich Hölderlin’s “Hyperion” that speaks to me, about how the danger that threatens in a crisis is never total; there’s always a way out: “Where the danger is, also grows the saving power.” That’s the genius in the human story: There’s always a way to escape destruction. Where humankind has to act is precisely there, in the threat itself; that’s where the door opens.

This is a moment to dream big, to rethink our priorities — what we value, what we want, what we seek — and to commit to act in our daily life on what we have dreamed of.

God asks us to dare to create something new. We cannot return to the false securities of the political and economic systems we had before the crisis. We need economies that give to all access to the fruits of creation, to the basic needs of life: to land, lodging and labor. We need a politics that can integrate and dialogue with the poor, the excluded and the vulnerable, that gives people a say in the decisions that affect their lives. We need to slow down, take stock and design better ways of living together on this earth.

The pandemic has exposed the paradox that while we are more connected, we are also more divided. Feverish consumerism breaks the bonds of belonging. It causes us to focus on our self-preservation and makes us anxious. Our fears are exacerbated and exploited by a certain kind of populist politics that seeks power over society. It is hard to build a culture of encounter, in which we meet as people with a shared dignity, within a throwaway culture that regards the well-being of the elderly, the unemployed, the disabled and the unborn as peripheral to our own well-being.

To come out of this crisis better, we have to recover the knowledge that as a people we have a shared destination. The pandemic has reminded us that no one is saved alone. What ties us to one another is what we commonly call solidarity. Solidarity is more than acts of generosity, important as they are; it is the call to embrace the reality that we are bound by bonds of reciprocity. On this solid foundation we can build a better, different, human future.

 

 SEE WHO PENNED THIS OP-ED: HINT - NOT A RABBI!

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/opinion/pope-francis-covid.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

"Temporary" Permission For Religious People To Kill Thy Neighbor, Thy Family, & Thyself!

 

"The application for injunctive relief presented to Justice Breyer and by him referred to the Court is granted in part. Respondent is enjoined from enforcing Executive Order 202.68’s 10- and 25-person occupancy limits on applicants, including Agudath Israel of America’s current New York-based affiliates, pending disposition of the appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and disposition of the petition for a writ of certiorari, if such writ is timely sought. Should the petition for a writ of certiorari be denied, this order shall terminate automatically. In the event the petition for a writ of certiorari is granted, the order shall terminate upon the sending down of the judgment of this Court. Chief Justice Roberts, dissenting: I dissent for the reasons set out in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, 592 U. S. ___ (2020) (Roberts, C. J., dissenting). Justice Breyer, with whom Justice Sotomayor and Justice Kagan join, dissenting: I dissent for the reasons set out in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, 592 U. S. ___ (2020) (Breyer, J., dissenting). Justice Sotomayor, with whom Justice Kagan joins, dissenting: I dissent for the reasons set out in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, 592 U. S. ___ (2020) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting)."

https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/20a90.html

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20a87_4g15.pdf

Always choose “the harder right instead of the easier wrong” and to know “no fear when truth and right are in jeopardy.”

 

Happy Thanksgiving to All Those Who Told the Truth in This Election

Civil servants, elected officials and judges did their jobs and protected democracy.

With so many families gathering, in person or virtually, for this most unusual Thanksgiving after this most unusual election, if you’re looking for a special way to say grace this year, I recommend the West Point Cadet Prayer. It calls upon each of these future military leaders to always choose “the harder right instead of the easier wrong” and to know “no fear when truth and right are in jeopardy.”

Because we should be truly thankful this Thanksgiving that — after Donald Trump spent the last three weeks refusing to acknowledge that he’d lost re-election and enlisted much of his party in a naked power play to ignore the vote counts and reinstall him in office — we had a critical mass of civil servants, elected officials and judges who did their jobs, always opting for the “harder right” that justice demanded, not the “easier wrong” that Trump and his allies were pressing for.

It was their collective integrity, their willingness to stand with “Team America,” not either party, that protected our democracy when it was facing one of its greatest threats — from within. History will remember them fondly.

Who am I talking about? I am talking about F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee, who in September openly contradicted the president and declared that historically we have not seen “any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election” involving mail-in voting.

I am talking about Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — a conservative Republican — who oversaw the Georgia count and recount and insisted that Joe Biden had won fair and square and that his state’s two G.O.P. senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, did not garner enough votes to avoid election runoffs. Perdue and Loeffler dishonorably opted for the easier wrong and brazenly demanded Raffensperger resign for not declaring them winners.

I am talking about Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, who not only refused to back up Trump’s claims of election fraud, but whose agency issued a statement calling the 2020 election “the most secure in American history,” adding in bold type, “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.”

Krebs did the hard right thing, and Trump fired him by tweet for it. Mitch McConnell, doing the easy wrong thing, did not utter a peep of protest.

I am talking about the Republican-led Board of Supervisors in Maricopa County, Ariz., which, according to The Washington Post, “voted unanimously Friday to certify the county’s election results, with the board chairman declaring there was no evidence of fraud or misconduct ‘and that is with a big zero.’”

I am talking about Mitt Romney, the first (and still virtually only) Republican senator to truly call out Trump’s postelection actions for what they really were: “overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election.”

I am talking about U.S. District Judge Matthew W. Brann, a registered Republican, who dismissed Trump’s allegations that Republican voters in Pennsylvania had been illegally disadvantaged because some counties permitted voters to cure administrative errors on their mail ballots.

As The Washington Post reported, Brann scathingly wrote on Saturday “that Trump’s attorneys had haphazardly stitched this allegation together ‘like Frankenstein’s Monster’ in an attempt to avoid unfavorable legal precedent.”

And I am talking about all the other election verification commissioners who did the hard right things in tossing out Trump’s fraudulent claims of fraud.

Asking for recounts in close elections was perfectly legitimate. But when that failed to produce any significant change in the results, Trump took us to a new dark depth. He pushed utterly bogus claims of voting irregularities and then tried to get Republican state legislatures to simply ignore the popular vote totals and appoint their own pro-Trump electors before the Electoral College meets on Dec. 14.

That shifted this postelection struggle from Trump versus Biden — and who had the most votes — to Trump versus the Constitution — and who had the raw power and will to defend it or ignore it.

To all of these people who chose to do the hard right thing and defend the Constitution and the rule of law over their party’s interest or personal gain, may you have a blessed Thanksgiving.

You stand in stark contrast to Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo (who apparently never attended chapel at West Point), Mike Pence, Rudy Giuliani, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Nikki Haley, Kayleigh McEnany and all the other G.O.P. senators and House members, who put their party and self-interest before their country and opted for the easy wrongs. History will remember them, too.

Though Trump is now grudgingly letting the presidential transition proceed, we must never, ever, forget the damage he and his allies inflicted on American democracy by attacking its very core — our ability to hold free and fair elections and transfer power peacefully. Tens of millions of Americans now believe something that is untrue — that our system is rigged. Who knows what that will mean in the long run?

The depths to which Trump and his legal team sank was manifested last Thursday when Giuliani and Sidney Powell held a news conference alleging, among other things, that software used to disadvantage Trump voters was created at the direction of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. It was insane.

As Jonah Goldberg, a conservative critic of Trumpism, wrote in thedispatch.com: “The G.O.P.’s social media account spewed sound bites from Powell and Giuliani out into the country like a fire hose attached to a sewage tank.” Fox carried the whole news conference live — uninterrupted — for virtually its entire 90 minutes.

Shame on all these people.

Sure, now Trump and many of his enablers are finally bowing to reality — but it is not because they’ve developed integrity. It is because they WERE STOPPED by all those people who had integrity and did the hard right things.

And “shame” is the right word for these people, because a sense of shame was lost these past four years and it needs to be re-established. Otherwise, what Trump and all his sycophants did gets normalized and permanently erodes confidence in our elections. That is how democracies die.

You can only hope that once they are out of power, Barr, Pompeo, Giuliani and all their compatriots will be stopped on the streets, in restaurants or at conferences and politely but firmly asked by everyday Americans: “How could you have stayed all-in when Trump was violating the deepest norms that bind us as a democracy?”

And if they are deaf to the message being sent from their fellow citizens, then let’s hope some will have to face an interrogation from their own children at the Thanksgiving table this year:

“Mom, Dad — did you really side with Trump when it was Trump versus the Constitution?”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/opinion/trump-election-democracy.html

Love dem Lawyers...Always Looking for Something ---- The Real Ballots Or The Real Killer!

 

Trump, being the ultimate American Idiot, gave every lesser kind of American Idiot a licence to light little fires of idiocy across the land.

 

How Many American Idiots Are There? 73 Million Plus.

 

This Wasn’t Just an Election. It was a Census of American Idiots.

This was no ordinary election. By now, you know that. But I mean it in a slightly different way. Not just that Trump’s still trying to steal it, and the GOP’s in cahoots. No, I mean that this election was something like a census of American Idiots.

If you’ve been keeping up with the news, you’ve been hearing stories like this. A nurse talks, bewildered, desperate, about people in the Covid ICU. Who are gasping for breath. Plenty of whom go on to die. And as they’re oxygenated and ventilated and intubated, in rage, in fury, they lash out…going right on…denying Covid exists.

What the? How do…deny the existence of Covid…while you’re on your possible deathbed…in the Covid ICU?

And yet you know and I know. This is, unfortunately, tragically, grimly, the phenomenon that I call the American Idiot. The entire world knows by now. Sane Americans shake their heads at such people. But the rest of the world is genuinely staggered, jaw-dropped, banging their heads against the table. How do people even end up like this? So amazingly, well, idiotic? Why does America seem to breed this special kind of person, the American Idiot?

I don’t mean idiot in the way of an insult, by the way. To the Greeks, “idiot” was the ultimate term of scorn. Idiots were the most contemptible people in classical society. Why? The term really means, in the classical context, “people who are consumed only with self-interest.” And to the Greeks, the progenitors of democracy, nobody — nobody was more dangerous than an idiot.

Their reasoning went like this. Should enough of a society be consumed solely with self-interest, a society would soon enough cease to be a democracy. People only concerned with themselves can’t look out for any kind of common wealth or shared interest. They can’t exercise any of the following virtues: courage, compassion, truth, beauty, grace, generosity, kindness, humility, all of which are allocentric, meaning “other-focused,” not egocentric.

So what will happen to such a society? They reasoned that when a society hit a threshold of idiots, it would soon enough lapse into poverty, and then into tyranny. Idiots can’t build a society with any kind of public goods — for the Greeks, that meant things like trust and self-governance. Today it means all those plus healthcare and retirement. Because people wouldn’t be able to provide those things for themselves, as a society, they’d soon enough try to exploit each for them. Society would degenerate into a kind of snake eating its own tail — each person trying to exploit the next. Such a society would lapse into cruelty, hostility, anger, stupidity, ignorance, and folly — barbarism.

And soon enough, a demagogue would come along, who would prey on all those fears — conjuring up imaginary enemies, twisting rage into hatred — and democracy would flash out of existence.

It’s a good theory, when you think about it. What’s remarkable about it is how much more sophisticated and nuanced and intelligent it still is, all these thousands of years later, than what passes for modern economics and political science, which is all too often superficial nonsense. But does the theory hold up?

You only have to look at America, the Land of the Idiots. This election does something remarkable — it gives us a comically exact headcount of American Idiots. There are 73 million of them. That’s how many people voted for Trump.

Am I saying Trump voters are idiots? Of course I am, duh. Again, not as an insult, but as an observation. In the classical sense: people consumed with the narrowest definition of self-interest possible.

Think about the Covidiots for a moment. There they are, in the ICU, gasping for breath…raging at a poor nurse…screaming at her that Covid doesn’t exist. That’s an idiot. It’s someone whose self-interest is so extreme they can’t even admit the possibility that a lethal pandemic exists, because the whole world centres around them.

There are so, so many kinds of American Idiots. The ones who proudly carry guns to…Starbucks…and make their kids do “active shooter drills,” which, for the rest of the world, means that masked armed men burst into schools, pretend to shoot kids and teachers, and they have to pretend to die. The ones who voted against healthcare…again…in the middle of a literal pandemic. The working class heroes who’ve denied themselves retirement for fifty years now…while Wall St laughs. There are the ones who try to pray the gay away and think women should be relegated to child-rearing and domestic chores.

There are so, so many kinds of American Idiots that I’ve barely scratched the surface yet. The truth is that the above kind are the relatively benign ones. Then there are the Proud Boys, literal white supremacists…whom the President put on “stand by.” All those “militia-men,” meaning pudgy dudes with guns playing Rambo. You might think all that’s just a joke, but it’s not — this group is something very much like America’s ISIS. It recently planned to kidnap politicians and assassinate them on live television. They’re domestic terrorists, every bit as extreme as militant Islamic fundamentalists.

What’s remarkable about Trumpism is that it’s the Death Star of the American Idiots. Trumpism unites all the various kinds of American Idiots. In a kind of epic, colossal suicide pact.

What are the American Idiots really fighting for — whether they’re religious fanatics, Covidiots, gun nuts, or bigots? Free-dumb. In the rest of the rich world, freedom now has a modern meaning — it means something like “the set of rights that enable one to enjoy a decent life, from healthcare to retirement to income to childcare to dignity.” But in America, freedom means something so different it’s diametrically opposed: the right to do whatever you damn well please, no matter how harmful it is to anyone else, yourself, your city, town, country, or your loved ones.

Free-dumb is individualism gone thermonuclear, taken to its most absurd outer limits. It means that your right to carry a gun to Walmart is more important than kids getting educations. That you can teach your kids whatever kind of nonsense you want, instead of educating them to be proper members of a civilized society. It means that Justice Amy Coney Barrett can belong to a religious cult with no separation between private and public life — and that’s perfectly OK, nobody should question it. That you can go on “believing” Covid doesn’t exist, while you’re dying of it.

Free-dumb, this fanatical ideology of toxic individualism, is what unites the American Idiots. They’re all pursuing some flavour of it. And what Trump did was give all the various kinds of American Idiots the license to be as extreme in their pursuit of free-dumb as they ever wanted, and then some. Don’t want to wear a mask? Great! That’s your choice. Don’t want to believe in science? No problemo! Don’t think minorities are human beings? Excellent! Are women just there to bleach their hair and serve men? Well done!

Trump, being the ultimate American Idiot, gave every lesser kind of American Idiot a licence to light little fires of idiocy across the land. And now they’re burning out of control. America can’t get a grip on Covid, because the Covidiots keep right on spreading it…since they don’t believe it exists in the first place. Politics is burning down, since the vast majority of Republicans apparently believe the election was rigged. Society can’t make any progress, because the idiots block even the smallest iota of it, crying like big slobbering babies that their free-dumb is under attack. The smallest kind of cultural progress — gay rights, womens’ rights — are at constant risk of reversal, because the idiots can’t abide anyone else being a true equal, since the world has to spin around them, and their ignorance, stupidity, rage, and superstition.

How did all this come to be? Trump printed a licence for every American Idiot to go out and set fire to their own neighborhoods, sure — but why did they think that was a good thing to do? Because America’s a country so backwards it’s hard to explain just how the American Idiot ends up thinking the bizarre things they do. Certainly, the internet reinforces it. Visit an American bookshop, and most of the best-sellers are fanatical right-wing screeds. And American education is something you can opt out of.

So American idiocy is a kind of complex cultural problem right about now. The American Idiot is, we know, three things. One, less educated, as in, often, not very educated. Two, white. And three, downwardly mobile. Those give us standard explanations — the downwardly mobile lash out at even more powerless groups in society, in resentment and rage at their fall. That explains Trumpism’s virulent hate and bigotry.

But what explain Covid patients…on their deathbeds…denying Covid exists?

I think that in the end, all this goes right back to slavery. It set up a kind of Nietzschean-Darwinist dichotomy, which America has never overcome. The strong survive, and the weak perish — deservedly so. Either you’re strong or you’re weak. The weak are subhuman — they deserve their exploitation, abuse, and suffering, because they are liabilities and burdens the rest of us must carry.

If you believe that moral logic — even if you don’t really know you believe it, if it’s something you’ve just imbibed from your parents and elders and towns and cities, like breathing in the air — where do you end up? You end up with five super, super toxic qualities. One, you’re toxically indifferent: you’re unable to care about anyone else very much, because for you, suffering is a form of weakness. Two, you’re toxically fatalistic: you believe everyone deserves what they get. Three, you’re toxically individualistic: you believe that nobody deserves anyone else’s support. Four, you’re toxically reductive: you believe life is black and white. And five, you’re nihilistic: you believe that nobody has any intrinsic worth or value, not even yourself.

You become a kind of twisted, absurd moral caricature, in other words. You think kindness is denying people healthcare — because it teaches them a lesson. You think compassion is making kids pay lunch debt — because it teaches them “fiscal responsibility” (and no, that’s not even what fiscal means.) You think that to show caring, concern, empathy, thoughtfulness or curiosity is weakness. And you think, as you get a lethal disease, and you gasp for breath, that this can’t be happening to you, that it doesn’t exist, because you’re not one of the weak, the hated subhumans — that’s what being intelligent is.

This is the kind of person the world laughs at. Not in glee, even, anymore — but in horror. The world laughs because to most of the rest of it, people so twisted are genuinely almost impossible to believe in. Such people don’t seem to exist — at least in large social blocs — anywhere else in the world.

I’m not kidding. In Pakistan, for example, I can literally buy machine guns or even grenade launchers at the market. But nobody’s shooting up schools and carrying them to Starbucks. Nobody’s suggesting that they’re more important than education, healthcare, or jobs — no, not even the conservatives.

The only real analogue the world has to the American Idiot, really, is movements like the Taliban, or ISIS. Movements who are so fanatical that they develop what Americans call “alternate belief systems.” They believe 72 virgins await them in heaven. The American Idiot believes Covid doesn’t exist, and they can’t get it. That a gun, not healthcare, will protect them from frailty. What’s the difference, really? Not a whole lot. Both of these social groups have developed something like mass, collective delusions, which they cling to inextricably, which nobody can prise away from them, superstitions they believe have the power to save them, which just means make them supreme. It always comes back to supremacy, this problem of human stupidity.

So were the Greeks right? Take a hard look at America, the Land of the Idiots. This election was a census of them, which gave us a precise headcount. America has 73 million American Idiots. What do you about that many idiots? People who vote, ardently, cheer on, applaud, crave, their own self-destruction? Because — just as for ISIS or the Taliban — it’s the one thing that proves their own supremacy, the ultimate test of strength and manhood and all the rest of it? What do you about people so foolish they don’t “believe” in the virus that’s putting them in the ICU?

I have some good news, and I have some bad news. The bad news is that nobody knows. Extremists and fanatics like this destroyed the Islamic world in record time — no, it wasn’t always the backwards place it is now. The good news is they tend to self-destruct. Idiots are martyrs. ISIS and the Taliban are happy blowing themselves up. American idiots are happy denying themselves healthcare and retirement and getting Covid. But also spreading it. The question is, then, how many of us go down with the idiots, as they self-destruct?

The Greeks were right. There is no greater curse for a society than a surplus of idiots, and no greater danger to it than it crossing a threshold of enough idiots. They do lead a nation to ruin, by way of indifference, fatalism, nihilism, selfishness, stupidity, brutality, and violence. They are unable to exercise the basic virtues of goodness, truth, compassion, wisdom, kindness, and concern. This most ancient of political theories — how strange that it’s turned out to be the most accurate one of all. After all, you only have to take a look at America to see it, laughing and shaking its head, down the millennia.

https://eand.co/how-many-american-idiots-are-there-73-million-bded995868cf

Cuomo did not, the state stressed, blame the spread of COVID-19 on the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. And if anything, the state observed, the executive order treats religious gatherings more favorably than secular activities that involve comparable risks – such as plays, concerts, spectator sports and movies – by allowing them to remain open, with limits on attendance.

 

New York tells justices not to intervene in conflict over attendance limits at worship services

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo urged the Supreme Court on Friday to stay out of the state’s battle with two Orthodox Jewish synagogues in New York City over an executive order that limits attendance at houses of worship as part of an effort to combat the coronavirus. Cuomo told the justices that because of “continued progress in containing COVID-19 spread,” the restrictions that the synagogues asked the court to block no longer apply to them.

Cuomo, a Democrat, issued the order at the heart of the dispute in October. The purpose of the order and the initiative that the order implemented, Cuomo explained in Friday’s filing, is to identify clusters of COVID-19 cases, to take “short-term aggressive measures” in and around the areas where those clusters are located to prevent the virus from spreading, and then to monitor the cases to determine how to proceed from there. When a cluster is identified, the area immediately around the cluster is known as a “red” zone; the area around the red zone is known as an “orange” zone, and the area around the orange zone is known as a “yellow” zone. Attendance at worship services is limited to 10 people at religious institutions in the red zone and 25 people in the orange zone. Attendance in the yellow zone is limited to 50% of the building’s maximum occupancy.

The synagogues challenged the 10- and 25-person restrictions in federal court in New York, arguing that the restrictions make it impossible for them to hold services for all of their congregants. The district court denied a request to block the enforcement of the order, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit declined to step in while the synagogues appealed. The synagogues then came to the Supreme Court on Tuesday, asking the justices to put the restrictions on hold or, in the alternative, grant review without waiting for the 2nd Circuit to rule on their appeal.

In a filing by New York Solicitor General Barbara Underwood, the state emphasized that its efforts to control the disease are working. As a result, the state explained, the synagogues (and the rest of New York City) are now in yellow zones, where houses of worship are restricted to 50% of maximum occupancy – a limit that the synagogues are not challenging.

But in any event, the state continued, both the district court and the 2nd Circuit rejected the synagogues’ assertion that the executive order was motivated by hostility toward the Orthodox Jewish community. The different zones, the state noted, affect various businesses and religious institutions. Some zones do not contain any Orthodox Jewish communities, while some Orthodox Jewish communities are “left untouched.”

Although Cuomo, in an October press conference, acknowledged the prospect that his order could affect worship services, the state added, he “made clear that the order did not target any gatherings because of their religious nature.” Instead, the state explained, the order was focused on “mass gatherings” – such as at houses of worship – because of their “super-spreader potential.”

Cuomo did not, the state stressed, blame the spread of COVID-19 on the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. And if anything, the state observed, the executive order treats religious gatherings more favorably than secular activities that involve comparable risks – such as plays, concerts, spectator sports and movies – by allowing them to remain open, with limits on attendance.

The state also pushed back against the synagogues’ suggestion that blocking enforcement of the restrictions would bring the state “into line with the approaches of other States.” “The approaches of other states,” New York told the justices bluntly, “are not working,” as current COVID statistics reflect. Even if “public officials in other states may deem certain measures sufficient to protect their own citizens,” New York concluded, that “does not prevent New York State from pursuing a different public health strategy.”

Finally, the state rejected the synagogues’ suggestion that the court should take up their appeal before the 2nd Circuit can decide it. Because the 10- and 25-person limits do not apply to the synagogues now, the state noted, there is no urgency to their request; moreover, the 2nd Circuit has agreed to fast-track their appeal, with oral argument scheduled for Dec. 18.

The state made similar arguments on Wednesday in opposing a request by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn to lift the attendance limits. In its filing in that case, the state praised the steps that churches have voluntarily taken to try to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission. But those measures, the state argued, should not provide an exemption from the attendance limits: Among other things, those protocols have not yet been independently tested in COVID hotspots. And the state is not required, it continued, to “negotiate COVID-19 restrictions for each and every house of worship on a building-by-building basis.”

Shortly after filing its opposition on Wednesday, the state sent a letter to the court to inform the justices of the changes to the classification of the areas where the diocese’s churches are located. As of Nov. 20, the letter explained, “none of the Diocese’s churches will be affected by the gathering-size limits it seeks to enjoin.”

This post was originally published at Howe on the Court.

The post New York tells justices not to intervene in conflict over attendance limits at worship services appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

OPPOSITION TO APPLICATION FOR WRIT OF INJUNCTION OR, IN THE ALTERNATIVE, CERTIORARI BEFORE JUDGMENT

 No. 20A90

Supreme Court of the United States 

AGUDATH ISRAEL OF AMERICA,et al., Applicants, V. ANDREW M.CUOMO, 

Governor of New York, Respondent. OPPOSITION TO APPLICATION FOR WRIT OF INJUNCTION OR, IN THE ALTERNATIVE, CERTIORARI BEFORE JUDGMENT

 

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20A90/161415/20201120135238857_20A90%20Respondent%20NY%20Br%20in%20Opposition.pdf

Agudath Israel Brings its Case Against Gov. Cuomo’s Restrictions to the Supreme Court....

Even before the corona pandemic, the ultra-Orthodox community was traveling on an unsustainable trajectory. Their high birth rate, lack of secular education, and dependence on social welfare posed enormous challenges for the frum. The pandemic only exacerbated these challenges a hundred-fold.

 

● Survival of the Frummest ●

 

By: Rabbi Yossi Newfield

 

For long stretches of Jewish history, being a practising traditional or religious Jew meant living a life in accordance with Mosaic law, but not in overt conflict with the surrounding culture. At times, to reduce conflict with the dominant culture, rules were amended to allow the Jewish people to live more peacefully with their Christian or Muslim neighbors. It is for this reason that Rabbeinu Gershom (circa 1000 CE) took the unprecedented step of outlawing polygamous marriages despite their permissibility under Mosaic law, since in his time Christian Europe had banned polygamy.

 

Rabbis of all ages understood the delicate balance they had to tread between staying true to Mosaic law and its Talmudic interpretation and at the same time recognizing the facts on the ground. The extensive rabbinic responsa literature extant attests to the creativity, if not brilliance, of rabbinic leaders in trying to find practical solutions that allowed the Jewish people to survive the long and arduous exile.

 

This state of affairs continued until the times of Rabbi Moshe Sofer (1762–1839, also known by his main work as the Chatam Sofer), who vigorously opposed the innovation and change in Jewish communal life promoted by the Enlightenment Movement. The Chatam Sofer claimed that anything new or novel is forbidden – חדש אסור מין התורה. Today's ultra-Orthodox community are the heirs of the Chatam Sofer's rejection of much of the modern world. The rejection of science, democracy, and secular education can all be traced back to the Chatam Sofer's ambivalence and rejection of modernity and all of its blessings.

 

This is not to say the Chatam Sofer did not have a reason to be wary of modernity. The wave of assimilation in Germany and other countries surely highlighted the challenges of staying true to the Torah while simultaneously living and being a part of a liberal democratic order. Nevertheless, blindly following the Chatam Sofer's ethos of prohibiting innovation is wrong, and ultimately, self-defeating, as the current haredi lifestyle can not be indefinitely sustained.

 

Upon closer examination, though, changes have occurred in both halachic practice and Torah learning in ultra-Orthodox society. In the pre-Enlightenment era, a traditionally religious Jew was expected to keep basic rabbinical law (halacha). Only a small number of the most devout kept the most stringent opinion (chumrah) on any given question. Today, the difference between the halachic practice of the average man and a select few ultra-pious individuals has vanished. Now, all community members are expected to observe the most stringent opinion in every case and circumstance. Hence, glatt kosher meat has become today’s communal norm. This is also the reason behind the numerous new stringencies observed on Pesach. What used to be the practice of a tiny minority of families has now become the norm throughout the ultra-Orthodox – and especially hasidic -- world.

 

Equally restrictive is the intellectual narrowness and outright rejection of the rational tradition that not so long ago was an acceptable position within rabbinic Judaism. Today, the views of the medieval rationalists such as the Rambam in Moreh Nevuchim, the Ralbag on the Torah, and the theology of Don Abarvanel are almost entirely ignored within frum society. Instead, they have been replaced with the legends of the Baal Shem Tov, miracles of the Arizal, and stories of the incredible diligence in Torah study of rosh yeshivas. As far as Jewish law goes, even Rav Moshe Feinstein, the leading haredi posek of post WWII America, is considered too lenient and ‘modern’ by many.

 

The anti-science posture of the ultra-Orthodox community can best be illustrated by the example of the Chabad movement – which to outsiders may seem to be relatively modern. However, following their deceased rebbe's lead, Chabad adherents continue to believe in a discredited geocentric model of the universe. In other words, they reject the scientifically accepted Copernican view which states that the earth revolves around the sun (at least until Einstein came along). Despite their outwardly modern appearance, internally Chabad members still subscribe to an ancient and discredited model of reality.

 

Even before the corona pandemic, the ultra-Orthodox community was traveling on an unsustainable trajectory. Their high birth rate, lack of secular education, and dependence on social welfare posed enormous challenges for the frum. The pandemic only exacerbated these challenges a hundred-fold.

 

The ultra-Orthodox love affair with Trump is not surprising to say the least, as he is a defender of their isolationist, anti-science, anti-democratic, and frequently racist, faith. But Trump's reign is coming to an end, whether he likes it or not. With Trump gone, the ultra-Orthodox will have to eventually tackle their problems on their own. One thing is certain -- the process won't be pretty.