Measles is no harmless little illness. Around the world it causes 400 deaths a day, 16 deaths an hour. It’s one of the leading causes of death among children. Among those who survive, it can cause pneumonia, brain damage and hearing loss....

Low Vaccination Rates at Jewish Schools in CA

Is putting other kids’ health at risk really a Jewish value?

As you surely know by now, measles—once essentially eliminated in America—is again becoming an epidemic. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of cases in the U.S. is at a 20-year high. In the recent outbreak at Disneyland, the vast majority of the victims were unvaccinated.

California in general is chock full of crunchy clusters of people who refuse to vaccinate. A study published earlier this month found five areas in the Golden State with stratospheric rates of unvaccinated or under-immunized kids: Northeastern Sacramento County and Roseville (5.5 percent); Marin and Southwest Sonoma (6.6 percent); Northeast San Francisco (7.4 percent); an area from Alameda to El Cerrito (10.2 percent) an area south of Sacramento (13.5 percent). The statewide average vaccine refusal rate, outside these areas, is 2.6 percent.

 To achieve herd immunity, in which the percentage of people who are vaccinated is high enough to protect the unvaccinated, 94 percent of the population has to be immunized against the measles.

Measles is no harmless little illness. Around the world it causes 400 deaths a day, 16 deaths an hour. It’s one of the leading causes of death among children. Among those who survive, it can cause pneumonia, brain damage and hearing loss. As health writer Dan Diamond pointed out in Forbes yesterday, you’re 35,000 times more likely to die from measles than to win at Powerball. An unvaccinated baby in a room with someone who has measles, however, has way more impressive odds: he has a 90 percent chance of developing the virus. (Crowded places like Disney and or a classroom mean a fabulous chance of transmission. And if you have measles, you have four glorious days in which you’re contagious before you even develop symptoms.)

Pertussis is a terrible disease too. Before the availability of a vaccine in the 1940s, it was a major cause of child mortality in the U.S.; in developing countries it still causes 195,000 deaths a year. And it’s miserable: The disease makes children cough so hard they may break ribs. And yet in 2014 there were 8,000 pertussis cases in California. Two babies died.

You would think that Jews, with our values of tzedek, tzedek tirdof (“righteousness, righteousness shall you pursue”) and al tifrosh min hatzibur (“don’t view yourself as separate from your community”), as well as our general proficiency in the areas of health and medicine, would be all over vaccination. You would think that since our sage Reb Nachman of Breslov (who died in 1810 of tuberculosis, back in pre-TB-vaccine times) wrote, “One must be very, very careful about the health of children… One must inoculate every baby against smallpox before one-fourth of the year, because if not, it is like spilling blood,” we’d be vaccinating fiends all up in this joint.

You would be wrong. As I’ve written repeatedly in Tablet and elsewhere, Jews are opting out of vaccination—either partially or entirely—in serious numbers.

There’s no halakhic (Jewish law-based) reason for this. In 2005, the Conservative Movement’s governing body, the Rabbinical Assembly, ruled that Jewish Day Schools can, in accordance with halakha, make immunization compulsory. And Orthodox Jews who believe Judaism encourages opting out should heed the full-throated call to vaccinate from David Shabtai of Boca Raton Synagogue: “Jewish law cannot serve as a basis for a religious exemption for vaccination. Claiming that it does is a perversion of both logic and religious law.”

And yet. Jewish actresses, from Big Bang Theory co-star Mayim Bialik (who has a Ph.D. in neuroscience!) to Lloyd-Dobler-pen-bringer Ione Skye (author of a children’s book about Yiddish, and married to Jewish musician Ben Lee), have turned up their noses at evidence-based medicine. (Skye has stated that skipping some vaccines makes “instinctive sense”: “As a mother, it just felt better to me—and my kids never had any reaction.”) Thank heaven for Amanda Peet! Author of a forthcoming children’s book about being Jewish at Christmastime, wife of novelist and Game of Thrones showrunner David Benioff, activist with the United Nations Shot@Life campaign, and star of the new HBO series Togetherness, she’s also the parent of a child who contracted pertussis between her second and third doses of the vaccine. “I know a lot of parents who stagger their kids’ vaccines,” she told The Hollywood Reporter last year. “Their position is, ‘Hey, why are you so gung ho on tanking your kids with all those vaccines?’ They act almost concerned for me, and I want to say, ‘Wait a minute, your children are actually benefiting from the barrier I’m putting in place for them, and now you’re questioning my soundness of mind for doing that?’”

Alas, Peet often seems to be a voice in the wilderness. The California Department of Public Health recently created a public database of immunization levels in all California schools, public, private and parochial, and KQED’s California Report turned it into an easily searchable tool.

 I plugged in the names of the 68 schools in Private School Review’s list of Jewish elementary schools in the state and found 14 with nosebleed-inducing levels of vaccine refusal. Here is the list of schools (only elementary schools that have kindergartens are in the database) and their Personal Belief Exemption (PBE) rates. Remember, six percent is the threshold for herd immunity. 

Abraham Joshua Heschel Day School, Northridge: 18 percent
Adat Ari Day School, Valley Village: 13 percent
Bais Chaya Mushka Chabad, Los Angeles: 11 percent
Brandeis Hillel, San Rafael, 8 percent
Cheder of Los Angeles, Los Angeles: 12 percent
Cheder Menachem, Los Angeles 9 percent
Contra Costa Jewish Day School, Lafayette: 19 percent
Emek Hebrew Academy Teichman Family Torah Center, Sherman Oaks: 8 percent
Hebrew Academy Huntington Beach: 18 percent
Harkham Hillel Hebrew Academy: 10 percent
Ilan Ramon Day School Agoura: 13 percent
Kabbalah Jewish Academy, Los Angeles: 75 percent
Tehiyah Day School in El Cerrito: 13 percent
Valley Beth Shalom Day School, Encino: 18 percent

Three more schools had no data available: Oakland Hebrew Day School, Torat Hayim Academy and Yeshiva Rav Isacsohn Torath Emeth.

As Diamond points out in Forbes, the work of Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan has shown that presenting credible scientific evidence to anti-vaccine parents only makes them dig in their heels. American Journal of Public Health editors Dr. Kenneth Camargo Jr and Roy Grant have proposed a different approach: using pro-vaccine experts and activists who are not scientists as educators. People who get PBEs are people who tend to distrust public health experts, so using people with “interactional expertise” as communicators, instead of relying on doctors and scientists to spread public health messages, might be effective.

If the carrot doesn’t work, perhaps the stick will. Lawmakers are discussing tightening the rules for receiving PBEs. Ethicist Arthur Caplan has explored the idea of suing or criminally prosecuting non-vaccinators for causing illnesses. Me, I’m open to suggestions.

Come on, Jewish parents. Let’s be a light unto the nations.

http://tabletmag.com/scroll/188686/low-vaccination-rates-at-jewish-schools-in-california?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=a2954f780a-Friday_January_30_20151_30_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-a2954f780a-206530521

Muslim Demographics!

 This is a must hear and send to every person we know and it still might be too late for our children

Subject: How the world is changing – Muslim world population dominance

 This is a very frightening video...a must see !!
 

Saudis & Women... No different than the "ultra"- Orthodox crazies!

SAUDI ARABIA TV BLURS OUT FLOTUS MEESKITE FACE

A small furor has erupted over whether a Saudi television station blurred out the image of U.S. first lady Michelle Obama in the broadcast of her and President Barack Obama’s meeting with new Saudi King Salman today in Riyadh. Saudi officials deny the claim.

The new king shook hands with President Obama at the Erga Palace but didn’t acknowledge the first lady during a brief meeting at the funeral for King Abdullah. Barack and Michelle Obama cut short their trip to India to attend the funeral.  

Several videos posted on Saudis' Facebook pages obscured Michelle Obama's face. They were removed shortly after they were posted. I captured a screenshot of one such video before it was taken down. The Arab news service Mashahead posted on YouTube a video allegedly taken from the Saudi government television broadcast showing the blurred spot.

However,  Nail al-Jubeir, information director at the Saudi Embassy in Washington, e-mailed me that "Saudi TV has been showing the total arrival ceremony at the airport and at the Palace and nowhere is anything blurred." CNN's Hala Gorani tweeted that her colleague Nic Robertson, in Riyadh, saw non-blurred images on Saudi TV. Other news organizations, such as Al Jazeera, showed the meeting without obscuring Michelle Obama’s face.

The alleged blurring wasn't the only controversy.  Some Arab media outlets criticized Michelle Obama for wearing a blue dress, rather than a black one. Videos of the short meeting between Salman and President Obama showed the king leaving in the middle of the protocol, abruptly turning around and walking away, in order to go to prayer.

After the meeting, Barack Obama and Salman held a bilateral meeting that included Secretary of State John Kerry, Senator John McCain, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Ambassador Joseph Westphal and CIA director John Brennan.

According to the White House pool report, “Obama and Salman sat in gold chairs. A small table in front of them held a spray of white flowers.”

Obama praised the late king in a statement following his death, saying “King Abdullah's vision was dedicated to the education of his people and to greater engagement with the world.” In an interview with CNN before the visit, Obama explained why he was hesitant to press the new king about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, which includes restricting the rights of women.

"Sometimes we have to balance our need to speak to them about human rights issues with immediate concerns that we have in terms of countering terrorism or dealing with regional stability," Obama said.

(Updates with comment from Saudi embassy in third paragraph.)

To contact the author on this story:
Josh Rogin at joshrogin@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor on this story:
Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net

Newspaper in Israel Scrubs Women From a Photo of Paris Unity Rally

JERUSALEM — Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany was right there next to the president of France on Sunday, marching through the streets of Paris for all the world to see — all the world, that is, except the readers of an ultra-Orthodox newspaper in Israel.

MORE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/world/newspaper-in-israel-scrubs-women-from-a-photo-of-paris-unity-rally.html?_r=0

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-01-27/saudi-tv-blurs-michelle-obama-s-face-at-meeting-with-king

Even a small number of unvaccinated people (Jews Included) can make it much easier for a disease to spread.

On the heels of the measles outbreak at Disneyland, Melinda Gates of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation took aim at the vaccine naysayers who make these types of disease outbreaks more likely.

"We take vaccines so for granted in the United States," Gates told the Huffington Post in a prerecorded interview published on Thursday. "Women in the developing world know the power of [vaccines]. They will walk 10 kilometers in the heat with their child and line up to get a vaccine, because they have seen death. [Americans have] forgotten what measles deaths look like."

She added, "I'd say to the people of the United States: we're incredibly lucky to have that technology and we ought to take full advantage of it."

In response to the Disneyland outbreak, pediatric infectious disease specialist James Cherry told the New York Times the outbreak was "100 percent connected" to the anti-vaccine movement. "It wouldn’t have happened otherwise — it wouldn't have gone anywhere," he said.

The key is what the scientific community calls herd or community immunity. If every American of age was vaccinated, measles wouldn't spread much further even if foreign travelers came into the country with the disease — as appears to be the case with measles. Vaccinated people essentially act as barriers to measles outbreaks, since the disease can't pass through them and infect other people. The awful truth of the anti-vaccine movement is that it puts the most vulnerable populations at risk: infants under 12 months of age, who can't get vaccinated and are more susceptible to infection, and the elderly, who have a higher risk of death if they contract these illnesses.

What happens when some people don’t get vaccinated?

Even a small number of unvaccinated people can make it much easier for a disease to spread.

To explain this phenomenon, scientists often refer to herd or community immunity, a coverage threshold that effectively prevents an illness from spreading.

If no one is immunized, a disease can easily bounce from person to person until it reaches everyone. If some people are immunized, the immunized people act like buffers that prevent a disease from spreading through them. If enough people are immunized, the buffers essentially become impenetrable and a disease can't realistically spread at all.

(National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)

The threshold for community immunity depends on the disease and how it's transmitted. In an analysis of several vaccine-treatable illnesses, the CDC setthe lowest threshold of vaccine coverage at 75 percent — for mumps — and the highest at 94 percent — for measles and rubella. Even the low-end threshold requires at least three in four people — and often children in particular — to get vaccinated.

http://www.vox.com/2015/1/26/7907067/melinda-gates-measles-vaccines

The Decline and Fall of Modern Civilization: 8 Simple Steps to Squandering It All

Neither are great civilizations built in a day, nor do they collapse all of a sudden. 

Deterioration is gradual, therefore noticeable. In the Land of Israel, the First Temple was destroyed due to idolatry. The Second Temple was destroyed due to baseless hatred. In the 21st century, the subtler combination of irrationality with pusillanimity constitutes the fatal concoction. Our relationship to the obvious serves as an index through which the symptoms of decline are noted. Let all concerned for the commonwealth take caution, for here is how we sophisticated moderns lose civilization:

1. Cognitive Dissonance – A cerebral malfunction resulting in psychological blindness. We see something perfectly well but fail to recognize what it evidently is. A mental block prevents us from acknowledging the obvious.
2. Denial – The matter become clearer and reality loses its blur, yet we stubbornly refuse to admit what the matter signifies, instead suggesting that the proof must be partial and the evidence circumstantial or falsified. Conclusions drawn in this state fly in the face of facts. The blatantly obvious is rejected and disbelieved.
3. Delusive Ideology – Ideologues are prejudiced and their biases substitute for facts. Prejudicial lenses preclude deviant views from the ideologue’s mind. If the obvious does not align with an ideologue’s worldview, it is summarily discounted and dispensed with.
4. Aversion to Judgment – Decision-making becomes taboo. We are spoon-fed pap and gulp it down uncritically, abdicating the rudimentary responsibility to think. Judging is conflated with sentencing and regarded as a harsh action in and of itself. Abstaining from the matter altogether is thus considered to be the proper course. Neutrality and impartiality replace cerebration and discernment. Ideation is abruptly aborted and intellection rendered stillborn. Choosing becomes treason. We withdraw from the obvious for fear of being perceived as judgmental and severe in nature, thereby absolving ourselves of all charges in advance.
5. Political Correctness – The judicial ability is retained, yet we refuse to call a thing by its name so as not to cause offense. This is a form of self-censorship, and is falsely conflated with good taste. We account ourselves cultivated and munificent for refraining from forthrightness; those frank and outspoken are ostracized as boorish and unrefined. If there are beasts to behold, they go unnamed and untamed. Problems are swept under the rug of pretense. The obvious is subsumed and rebranded in more socially and politically palatable terminology.
6. Moral Equivalency – Issues are discernible and named, but they are equated in value despite precise and glaring disparities. Relativism is the order of the day. Good and evil, right and wrong, innocence and guilt – all these binaries are deliberately confused as antipodal extremes are brought into artificial congruence. Moral clarity is muddled and logical cogency diluted. All inherent preference is suspended out of a misguided attempt to achieve balance where there is none. The obvious is left in abeyance while the weighing scales are disingenuously leveled.
7. Identity Loss – When the fundamental values of a society are attenuated, its ontology andraisons d’être are called into question. The resulting identity deficit, the diminishing of identity integrity, inevitably eventuates in disintegration. Morals, ethics, values, virtues, and principles are sundered like marble columns and stone arches before our very eyes as the foundational premise of our civilization collapses. When we forget those things we stand for, we lose all motivation and capacity to preserve them. The obvious becomes untenable once we lose sight of who we are and what we cherish.
8. Surrender – Befuddled by existential ennui and essential malaise, we fall prey to a complacent acceptance of the status quo. What ramifies throughout the societal ranks is the absence of willpower to resist the onslaught of barbarism. Barbarians feed on weakness and cowardice, gain momentum, and propel themselves from the wild frontier toward then across civilization’s border, where they are met by weak-kneed, stooping figures, hollowed shells too gutted and spineless to withstand them. Those long ago resigned to their fate are invariably extinguished or else made servile to their vanquishers. History reveals that great civilizations decline and fall due to internal erosion, not external invasion. Intrinsic corruption and corrosion invite outsiders to raid, rape, pillage, and plunder. Conquest is thus merely the coup de grâce, a finishing stroke in the aftermath of prolonged dissolution. In most cases, conquerors appear more impressive than they deserve because the conquered first methodically, albeit unwittingly, lay the groundwork for them. Any species of predatory brutes can kick in a Maginot Line, and most do.Gentle readers, glance again at the above list. Anything seem familiar?
9. ...........
10. ............
11. http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/01/22/the-decline-and-fall-of-modern-civilization-8-simple-steps-to-squandering-it-all/

Sweeping things under the rug will no longer work!

How The Internet Is Changing The Jewish World

BY ELAD NEHORAI • JANUARY 22, 2015 • ESSAY, LONG READ

All of us know the world is changing.  All we have to do is look around and see how much things have transformed, and at what a rapid pace, over the last twenty years or so.

From the internet taking over our lives, to smartphones extending its reach to the downfall of some of what seemed to be the most stable totalitarian regimes around the world to the sudden power of men behind a screen forcing the changed release of a movie.

We all know we’re living in revolutionary times, but I wonder, at times, if people are aware of just how revolutionary they are.  Just how different.

As an online marketer and a person who has been creating online communities for almost a decade now, I’ve been fascinated by the way the Information Revolution has changed our world and the way we interact with each other.  As a Jew who entered the religious world only seven years ago or so, I’ve slowly become even more fascinated by how that change has and will affect us as a people.

I think that, as Jews, it’s essential we understand this change, and understand what it will mean for us.  Also, we must understand how we can use it, and what we must be wary of.

Because if we don’t, there is a chance we will be missing huge opportunities as well as potentially lose our focus on growth as people.

So, I present to you a list of ways I believe the internet is changing the Jewish world, and how we need to change our approach to communal development because of it.

1. The rise of organic communities

The internet is the ultimate community-maker.  The ultimate voice for the voiceless. Whereas in the past, a community was generally built by some structure: whether it be a leader with followers, an ideal with believers, a movement with zealots, or whatever else, the internet has been able to reverse the process by which communities are created.

Now, a commonality brings people together, looking for others like themselves.  A great example of this is how TV shows that would (and did) fail in the traditional model because they could not gain enough fans quickly enough (because they did not pander to the lowest common denominator), would build a following of truly passionate fans who then spread the word simply because they found each other online, connected, and built communities that eventually grew.  Arrested Development was resurrected because of this.  Freaks and Greeks is now considered a classic.

A more potent example, and a more world-changing example, would be the atheist movement.  This BuzzFeed article is perhaps one of the most fascinating examinations of how atheism has been able to flourish due to the internet.

Essentially, atheists used to be tucked away in communities, hiding their identities and feeling very alone.  There was usually too much to lose by being an atheist, especially a militant one.

Then the internet came around.  Suddenly, atheists could speak to each other without fear of being looked down on by their parents, relatives, and communities.  They could be passionate about their beliefs, grow communities, and change the world, all without the dangers of exposure.

The even more fascinating aspect of this is the way that organic community-building has now allowed atheists to feel safer with that exposure.  They’ve created conventions, their own media outlets, even “churches”.

The point here isn’t whether atheism is valuable as a movement: it’s why atheism has been able to flourish today.  It is an organic community, built not because of a charismatic leader who wants to change the world, not because of an ideal forced onto others, but because of an ideal that existed within others and which brought them together, thus eventually creating the leaders and institutions that we usually associate with being the root of successful communities and movements.

How this affects the Jewish world: What the Jewish establishment does not seem aware of is how much this has happened already and how much more it will happen in the future.

A perfect example of such a movement is here at Hevria.  Hevria did not create a community, it was created by a community.  The writers here all knew each other already.  The community had been built on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other venues.  Now it’s beginning to be formed.  Soon it will take on a physical existence, just like the atheist movement.

Another example is the “off the derech” community.  A group of people that simply would not exist without the internet.  Just like the atheists, they could not possibly have found each other without the aid of the net.  Now they have seders together, they have funded organizations to help others, and they will continue to grow (until the Jewish world rights itself).

This means that as Jews, we need to be aware that these communities are not just minor blips, outliers, as they appear to be now: they are the future mainstream.  They are the beginnings of something big.  And this isn’t a fantasy I’m living out: it’s been proven all over the world, in every community that has been touched by the internet.

The ideal reaction to these changes, one I’m hoping will happen soon, is that the Jewish communal and financial leaders, rather than continuing to force communities onto us (I hesitate to call anyone particular out for this since this is essentially how everyone works), they should be aiding the communities that are developing.  The ones that show potential should be aided, not treated as funky outliers.

2. Sweeping things under the rug will no longer work

Make no mistake: this is not just a “change”.  This isn’t evolution.  This is revolution.

For an example of what I mean, we need to look at the overhaul of regimes that have happened in the Mideast, starting with Egypt.

Now, the general concensus around what happened in the Mideast is that people got tired of their governments mistreating them, and decided to overthrow their governments.  And yes, most people acknowledge that social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, aided them in their struggle.

All this is true, but what I think some people miss is that these revolutions weren’t just aided by social media, they were caused by social media.

True, people were oppressed, but they had been oppressed for years.  The difference between before and now is that the tools were put in place for them to communicate, organize, and eventually overthrow their oppressive leaders.  Organic communities of resistance were thus created and sustained through social media. 

In other words, the internet in many ways has begun to fulfill (if imperfectly) the true potential of democracy.

This is not to say that the overthrow of any of these governments were effective, or even that they were a good thing.

But I find the continued overthrow of governments in Egypt (what are we up to now? 3?) to be heartening rather than dispiriting: a sign that even if democracy itself cannot flourish in a nation like Egypt, the will of the people will still have to be heard in some fashion.  The internet makes it much harder for leaders and governments and societies to hide away the people in pain, and thus makes it much harder for the pain of the people to be unheard.

What this means for the Jewish people: The last ten or so years have seen a rash of reports, action, and confusion around certain topics in the Jewish world.

Just a few examples:

1. Women trying to divorce from husbands who refuse their get.

2. Sexual abuse by leaders of certain communities.

3. General corruption in the Jewish world.

These stories have always been around, and were even covered by some mainstream publications in the past.  But the strength to truly address them, and the persistence of their reappearances can be directly attributed to the internet.

Why?  Whereas in the past, it would take quite some work for a story to get out, and even then, a community might not address it fully, the power of the internet to magnify even a single voice who then attracts more voices to a cause is beyond compare.

Incidentally, I think this is part of the reason we’ve been seeing more stories of sexual abuse of celebrities come to light these days.  It used to be possible to quite a story, but today it’s become almost impossible.  Someone, somewhere will speak up, which will give the strength to others.

The implications of this are that the more oppressive communities in the Jewish world, from New Square to Beit Shemesh, and the corrupt communities, are due for much more transformation than even they are aware of.

The communities that are afraid of the internet are right to be afraid of it, but for the wrong reasons.  The internet will expose the pain that exists under the surface, and it will bring more and more people out of the woodwork who have been afraid to speak.

And while the most insular communities have managed to keep the internet out of their domain, it will become more and more impossible to make this a reality.  The internet is seeping into everything we do, and will soon be in our appliances, our thermostats, and our cars.  Phones were just the beginning.

Also, many of the problems that aren’t quite as dramatic, the ones that have frustrated people like me who live in vibrant communities with a host of dysfunctions, will have to address these problems more fully.

I would argue this is an urgent issue for most communities, and one that they ignore at their peril. The lesson of the Middle East is that the more communities fight and try to hide these stories, the more violent a reaction they are in for.  The more power will be lost by the leadership.  And the more likely it is that something different (rather than naturally evolved) will take their place. 

 And even worse, the less people will look to rabbinical leaders for advice.

These are neither good or bad things, they are simply the reality of a community that ignores the problems the internet will bring into the light.  Communities that want to survive, and definitely if they want to thrive, will need to adjust as quickly as the internet has changed their world.

3. This is temporary

Like any revolution, from the French revolution to the industrial revolution, the information revolution is a temporary moment in history.

In other words, the instability we are experiencing now, the world shaking under our feet, the scandals and disruptions to communities, are not the rule, but the exception.

We are living, in other words, in extremely exceptional times.  People my age and older have gone from living in a world where you had to make a call from your home and send a letter to communicate with others to being able to send a letter from a phone at any moment, and anywhere.  We’ve gone from knowing where we are from a paper map to always having a map in our pocket that even tells us where we are and exactly how to get to where we want to go.

It is thus important to understand that the tumultuous, uneven feeling of the world right now is something that is something that is normal for every revolution, every abrupt change in paradigm.

And every transition is hard, bumpy, and scary, even if it is good.  There are entire governments falling apart all over the world today, something unimaginable twenty years ago, but which has almost become the norm in some areas.  There are antisemites, racists, and terrorists gathering strength and banding together in ways unimaginable.  There are people whose only qualifications for extreme power is their ability to hack other computers, who have made entire corporations, even countries, fall to their knees.

We are, in many ways, living in the Wild West.  Uncharted territory, lawless and chaotic, but also full of potential.

It is thus our responsibility, as the people given the responsibility to live at a time that will affect many for years to come, to make this world safe and lawful.  To bring order to the chaos.  And to not simply accept the present as it is, but to see it in the context of history.

We must realize that things we do now will affect the inevitable order and calm that comes after a revolution.  That the “leaderlessness” of this generation is not necessarily how it will always be.  There will always be establishments and structures of power, the only question is what form they will take.

What this means for the Jewish people: The temporariness of it all means that those of us who happen to be having a Golden Age in the chaos of it all because we are finally being heard, need to understand that what we in the midst of now is simply the creation of a new order, not a continual chaos.

We need to step up, then, and work with uninhibited energy toward creating that order, and with a mind toward the end goal of ordered communities, not just loose-knit online chats.

We need to realize that there will be stages to this process, in which more order, more financial backing, more leadership, will be necessary.  We need to work with all our strength to make the new organic communities that are being created more empowered, more strong, and more vocal.

In other words, and I can’t emphasize this enough, we aren’t playing games.  Hevria, for example, is not a fun blog, it is simply one of the many organic communities that are a building block toward a changed Jewish community.

Most importantly, we need to understand that the organic communities of the internet are not meant to stay on the internet.  Like the atheists, we are meant to come out from the shadows, into the virtual world, and then into the real world.

While the world laughed at New Atheists, they built and are building, communities much stronger than many of the “old age” ones.  We have the opportunity, and the responsibility, to the do the same.  And just like the atheists had to learn to adjust from simply being a “fun” community to a “real” community, so will we.

What it will take is fearlessness, an attitude that this is not simply a hobby or a side project or something that we’re imagining.  It will take a vision of what we intend to accomplish.

And most importantly: it will take a community.  It will take continued collaboration.  It will take our Ahavas Yisrael.

And for the “old age”, the answer to this temporariness is not to fight it and wait for it to go away, but to engage with it.  Because while the change may be temporary, the effects won’t be.  Societies like New Square will not survive (if they don’t change).

What there needs to be is a deep engagement with what is happening and a trust in the people who are at the forefront of the changes.  There needs to be a willingness to change and to grow.  There needs to be the ability to handle the changes in our community, the revelations of scandals as well, with an openness and willingness to adapt.

This is a storm.  And we can use adjust our sails and allow it to push our boat forward, or we can get lost.  Or, G-d forbid, we could sink.

Most likely, all three will happen.  The only question is where we will be when the wind quiets.

http://hevria.com/elad/internet-changing-jewish-world/