Wednesday, May 06, 2020

The Hareidi-promoted understanding of emunat hakhamim is not only rejected by significant rabbinic authorities, but is deeply offensive to those who insist on the right to think for themselves and make their own decisions. To ascribe quasi-prophetic powers to a small clique of Talmudic scholars is intellectually unsound. It undermines a thinking faith and condemns the public to sheepishly follow the opinions of an unelected group of “gedolim.”

  I'm not one to mince words. Officially I retired from my "highly paid" blogging job. But I can't help myself from commenting on the present crisis. Why? For the same reason I blogged for almost 15 years!

TO TEACH YOU THAT YOUR WORLDVIEW IS MESSED UP, and give you an opportunity to get it right! And NOW It's not only killing people emotionally, but it is bringing death to your doorstep!

The bitter reality of Covid-19 has forced you to rethink just about everything you believed before the deadly virus started killing your friends, neighbors, family members and someone you know. Yes, some of the people were elderly and maybe their time was up anyway. But the facts are if they died of Covid-19, they died of an unwarranted, tortured, suffocating death, prematurely.

So how do we process the present crisis? What should we learn from this pandemic? What mistakes were made that could have prevented this calamity, or at the very least reduced the amount of illness and death?
The day before Purim, on March 9, Agudath Israel posted a Q & A that advised individuals to continue going to shul for minyan, attending synagogue Megilla readings, and carrying on with their Purim celebrations, unless they were actually ill. And on that same day, a large group of Rabbis and leaders gathered to discuss what they deemed a pressing issue for their community: the matter of preventing government enforcement of education standards in their yeshivas. Coronavirus, which had already begun to quietly spread throughout New York, was not their prime concern.


In 1990, I met with the Chief Rabbi of a major city in Israel, a man who was known for his great erudition and who authored a number of volumes of halakhic responsa. He told me that a military leader of Israel had asked him to encourage yeshiva students to serve in the army. He had responded to the general:  instead of getting yeshiva students to serve in the army, all the soldiers should put down their weapons and start studying Torah.  He quoted a Midrash that God will protect the Jewish people if they all study Torah. I asked the rabbi if he would risk the security of Israel based on that Midrash. He told me without hesitation: “yes, of course! We don’t need an army, we need everyone to study Torah. We have the words of hazal, and our Sages spoke truth.”
 
     When I expressed my astonishment that he actually thought Israel did not need military defense, he expressed his astonishment that I doubted the truthfulness of the words of the Midrash. The two of us were operating on different sets of assumptions.
     The Chief Rabbi was living in a pre-modern spiritual/intellectual bubble. He relied faithfully on the words of our ancient Sages; they knew the real truth. Their words were uttered in pure holiness. The teachings of our Sages are absolutely reliable, far more trustworthy than anything that could be said or taught by military, political, or governmental experts—especially those who were not religiously observant.
     The Chief Rabbi thought it was a lack of faith on my part to give more credibility to the experts than to statements made by our Sages. For my part, I was horrified that an intelligent and pious Chief Rabbi would genuinely think that Israel did not need military defenses if everyone simply studied Torah and kept the mitzvoth. We sat in the same room, we believed in and observed the same Torah…but we were in different spiritual/intellectual worlds.
     The Chief Rabbi was an advocate of emunat hakhamim, requiring us to have absolute faith in our Sages and their teachings. All genuine truth existed within the ken of our Sages. All “outside” information was not credible…unless the Sages themselves gave it credibility.
     This kind of thinking has gained traction within Orthodox Judaism in recent decades. It has led to an Orthodoxy that fosters authoritarianism and obscurantism. It has relegated immense power to gedolim who are supposed to have a monopoly on truth. It has fostered negative attitudes toward secular sources of knowledge, since the Sages have the keys to all real knowledge themselves. It discredits those fine Orthodox Jews who do not share their worldview, and ostracizes Orthodox rabbis who do not fall into line with their faith in the almost infallible wisdom of the gedolim.
     A venerable exponent of the emunat hakhamim view was Rabbi Avraham Karelitz,(1878-1953) popularly known as the Hazon Ish. He taught that “everything written in the Talmud, whether in the Mishnah or in the Gemara, whether in halakha or in aggadah, were things revealed to us through prophetic powers…and whoever deviates from this tenet is as one who denies the words of our Rabbis, and his ritual slaughtering is invalid and he is disqualified from giving testimony. (Kovetz Iggerot 1:59. This is cited by David Weiss Halivni, in The Midrashic Imagination: Jewish Exegesis, Thought and History, ed. Michael Fishbane (Albany: State University of NY Press, 1993, p. 40, n. 13)
     Not only are we instructed to believe in the prophetic powers of ancient Talmudic sages (even though they never claimed these powers for themselves), we are asked to suppress our own minds to the opinions of the sages. Even if we think their statements are unreasonable, we should assume they are right and we are wrong. Thus taught Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, an influential Hareidi leader of the 20th century:   “Our rabbis have told us to listen to the words of the Sages, even if they tell us that right is left and not to say, heaven forbid, that they certainly erred because little I can see their error with my own eyes. Rather, my seeing is null and void compared with the clarity of intellect and the divine aid they receive….This is the Torah view [daas Torah] concerning faith in the Sages. The absence of self-negation toward our rabbis is the root of all sin and the beginning of all destruction, while all merits are as naught compared with the root of all—faith in the Sages.” (Mikhtav me-Eliyahu 1:75-77, cited by Lawrence Kaplan “Daas Torah; A Modern Conception of Rabbinic Authority,” Rabbinic Authority and Personal Autonomy, ed. M. Sokol Northvale, NJ, Jason Aronson, 1992, pp. 16-17).
     Proponents of emunat hakhamim ascribe divine powers to the sages of all generations, including our own. They not only know Torah better than anyone else; their Torah knowledge gives them the right and authority to guide the Jewish people in all areas of life. In the words of Rabbi Bernard Weinberger:  “Gedolei Yisrael possess a special endowment or capacity to penetrate objective reality, recognize the facts as they really are and apply the pertinent halakhic principles. This endowment is a form of ru’ah haKodesh [Divine inspiration], as it were, bordering, if only, remotely, on the periphery of prophecy. ….Gedolei Yisrael inherently ought to be the final and sole arbiters of all aspects of Jewish communal policy and questions of hashkafa.” Cited by Lawrence Kaplan, p. 17).
     Rabbi Nachum Rabinovich has pointed out that emunat hakhamim actually has a very different meaning and intent (“Emunat Hakhamim, Mah Hi?”, in Darka shel Torah, Maaliyot Press, Jerusalem, 1998, pp. 206-214). We are expected to respect the wisdom of our sages, but not to assume their infallibility or their quasi-prophetic status. Rather than blindly following their words, we are expected to examine their comments carefully; to try to understand their intent; to accept or reject them only after careful consideration. “True emunat hakhamim requires deep analysis to seek the reasons for the words of the sages; this entails an obligation on the part of the student or questioner to a very careful and critical examination, to determine if there is place to dissent. Certainly their words have reason, but one is still obligated to clarify whether to follow [their words] in actual practice” (p. 213).   
     It is up to each individual to make informed decisions; it is wise to consult the advice and teachings of sages. But one is not allowed to suspend personal judgment. “There is a difference between one who seeks advice and then ultimately acts based on personal responsibility, and one who relies on a “great tree” without independent thought. There are those who ascribe this childish behavior under the name emunat hakhamim, whereas this is a perversion of this important virtue. Instead of acquiring true Torah, people who cling to this mistaken notion of emunat hakhamim thereby distance themselves from the light of Torah, and in the end don’t know their right from their left” (p. 214).
     For Rabbi Rabinovich, emunat hakhamim does not foster an attitude of blind obedience. On the contrary, it demands careful attention to the words of our sages…followed by a personal evaluation of whether those statements ought or ought not to be accepted. His views are very much in line with a long rabbinic tradition that calls for respect for the words of our sages, but not a belief in the infallibility or divine inspiration of their words.
     The Talmud and Midrashim are replete with statements by great sages on various topics…medical cures, demons, seemingly far-fetched interpretations of biblical verses. It is not a religious virtue to ascribe “truth” to all their statements, although it is important to try to understand the context of their words....

 Rabbi Abraham, son of Maimonides, in an important essay concerning aggada, maintained that one may not accept an opinion without first examining it carefully. (See his Ma-amar Odot Derashot Hazal, printed in the introductory section of the EinYaacov.) To accept the truth of a statement simply on the authority of the person who stated it is both against reason and against the method of Torah itself. The Torah forbids us to accept someone's statement based on his status, whether rich or poor, whether prominent or otherwise. Each case must be evaluated by our own reason.

 Rabbi Abraham stated that this method also applies to the statements of our sages. It is intellectually unsound to accept blindly the teachings of our rabbis in matters of medicine, natural science, astronomy. He noted: "We, and every intelligent and wise person, are obligated to evaluate each idea and each statement, to find the way in which to understand it; to prove the truth and establish that which is worthy of being established, and to annul that which is worthy of being annulled; and to refrain from deciding a law which was not established by one of the two opposing opinions, no matter who the author of the opinion was. 


We see that our sages themselves said: if it is a halakha (universally accepted legal tradition) we will accept it; but if it is a ruling (based on individual opinion), there is room for discussion."
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20 comments:

  1. Pass the Jumbo Salt Shaker11:24 PM, May 06, 2020

    Open Orthodox Marc Angel to whom the "Jewish" Ideas (sic) website belongs to, is a snake.

    Don't be fooled by all the fancy terminology he churns out. Is there a problem with the Agudah Fressers? Absolutely! But if it was up to Angel he would flood Klal Yisroel with millions of goyim, no kabolas mitzvos required. That's why he quotes from Rabinovitch (who passed away today), the primary backer of Seth Farber's twisted meshugassen.

    They are like taking the Kushner brothers seeking out gentile miniskirts & multiplying them at the rate of the coronavirus.

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  2. https://mcusercontent.com/d3013102b6daadc1be1e94d25/files/3d882b88-49fd-461a-ba05-49c7e65693a8/TU_Tuition_Guidelines_COVID_19_4.29.20.pdf

    Here is busybody Shmuel Kaminetzky at the forefront of yet another endeavor which I'm not sure if it's 100% fair & honest.

    Instead of allowing for yes there is a genuine halacha shayla if yeshivos owe a refund to mishpochos when they are now providing watered down chinuch - which could be much improved on if only they allow video instead of stubbornly clinging to teleclasses, and only the free platforms that don't cost the yeshivos a penny, who cares if the mishpochos are wasting hours trying to log in & stay connected while many classes are missed.

    SK & the Fressers instead hit you with a guilt trip that you could somehow cause all yeshivos to collapse & twist your arm to not ask for even $1 dollar hanocho.

    The complicit yeshivos distributing this letter are coming up with every weak excuse how the pandemic supposedly does not leave them with any money left over. With straight faces, they even throw into the mix various side businesses the yeshiva owns that are taking a hit, despite that it has nothing to do with their core business of educating kids in the classroom.

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  3. On refunding parents some tuition money:

    Many parents are out of work, on the other hand teachers need to be paid. A panel of three wise baal habatim should review each case on its own set of circumstances.

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  4. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/significant-changes-for-rabbinic-judaism/

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  5. R' Chaim Volozhiner says something similar to Rabbeinu Avrohom ben haRambam.

    But these Open Ortho shvantzes hijack a proper shita to feed their warped agendas. The shita is not meant to be misused by am haaratzim and/or learned but devious Reformers which the Open Ortho crowd are split between those two categories.

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  6. The two fakers Zvi Gluck & Yankel Horowitz apparently aren't making enough money with their victim "advocate" charade so their latest hot topic is the virus. What a "winner" of a panel they've organized from the headmaster of a co-ed school to OU official Dr. Elly Lasson.

    https://health.maryland.gov/psych/pdfs/lasson.pdf

    who is from the same shul as & appears to be the brother of disgraced molester Jonathan Lasson who sic'ed the ra-bonim of Baltimore on his victim to shut her up.

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  7. COL Live

    Sruli Schochet – Los Angeles

    Between yeshiva elementary & preschool, I'm dealing with 5 separate institutions for my children. I observe how different schools respond to Covid-19. I've also spoken with many parents from other schools & read a lot of what's put out by said schools (including the horrifically insensitive letter jointly put out by many non-Chabad schools in LA, that went viral). I'd like to humbly offer a parent perspective.

    To illustrate what goes on in my house, which many can relate to. My wife, who normally drops the kids off at school & goes about her errands, now spends her days logging 3 kids in & out of Zoom classes. She then needs to supervise homework between said classes. Trying to get the other 2 preschoolers to sit in their “classes” is harder than herding cats. All the while, she entertains & toilet trains 2 year old twins who're super excited their siblings are home & do their best to let them know, by disrupting them during class.

    How're the schools responding to this? Are they calling to offer tuition breaks? Are they rebating expenses that no longer exist? Generally, I see various arguments put forth by the schools why they continue to charge full tuition

    There are many programs now, which hopefully all schools applied to (& if not, it's pure negligence), such as PPP, which covers salaries for months. There's also EIDL, mortgage deferment, not to mention that all ancillaries (security, utilities, transport, etc) have just gone away during the shutdown.

    Special kudos to my kids preschool, who've already informed parents that all PPP money received will reduce tuition. However, they're the only ones to say anything of the sort. Others have indicated they're not even returning the monthly security or bus fee, despite that neither are utilized or owed.

    However, even if all those programs were not available, I take umbrage with the assumption that the burden automatically shifts to the parents, to continue to pay the same tuition as before, despite the drastic change in circumstances.

    I don't live in a bubble & fully understand the need to pay employees & the importance of cash flow. Any institution that doesn't keep a watchful eye on this won't be around long.

    However, I also know that if my customer orders 5 items & I only deliver 3, I don't have the luxury to say: “Listen, I know you didn’t get what you ordered, but I still need you to pay for all 5. I have employees to pay & overhead to cover.” Needless to say, such a request would be illogical, even unethical.

    There's no question fundraising has taken a hit. Dinners, Chinese auctions (we should rename that!) & other events have fallen to the side.

    However, aren't the attendees mostly parents of the students? Are these not the people you want to keep happy so when fundraisers restart they don’t have a sour taste how they were treated during a difficult time? I can see a parent thinking: You want me to pay $1000 to be a trustee at your dinner when last year you charged me excess tuition without acknowledgment or a ‘thank you’?

    While that may be an immature thought process, we're all human & want to be treated with dignity. No one likes to feel taken advantage of. I'm no marketing guru, but the way things are handled now, seems like it'll have ramifications in the long run.

    To date, not a single institution I deal with has called to discuss my financial situation or even to acknowledge the crisis. The emails either ignore the subject, or worse, ‘politely’ tell parents: tough luck.

    To me, that's the biggest travesty.

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  8. I sent the below "Purim" email to my daughters, granddaughters and sisters on March 6. Knowing that the only with I could grab their attention about the seriousness of Covid-19 through humor.

    You forwarded this message on 3/6/2020 12:13 PM
    The CoronaVirus is especially contagious to people with weak immune systems, accordingly, quoting "The Gemorah in Shabbos (33b)" The Gemorah states that Nashim daatan kalot – a statement that many have used to claim that the Rabbis are anti-women.

    No, I am not anti- women:-)

    I therefore pasken that daatin kalos includes the immune systems of women.

    Therefore I proclaim that NO WOMAN MAY FAST on Taanit Esther.

    With Birchas Hayayin, kokosh cake, and yumee cheese blintzes, may your Tannit Esther be a day of eating ad dlo yada, not knowing the difference between Weight Watchers and the Mediterranean diet.

    Brucha V'Hatzlooocha,

    Love

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  9. https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/catskill-news/1858466/catskills-update-camps-will-operate-under-complete-lockdown-if-allowed-to-open-ajco.html

    Who knew that the Association of Jewish Camp Operators is just another Agudah division in every way, from being run out of Fresser HQ to being headed by Agudah flunky Frischman to pushing the same sick Philly agenda again of endangering lives to satisfy their urge of being contrarian to anything that doctors advocate?

    There is also a degree mixed in here of GREEDY FRESSER camp owners who don't give a damn about your children's lives, they only want to line their pockets with gelt. They are a perfect fit for Shmuel Kaminetzky whom a poel yotzai of his anti-vaxx lunacy is exposing everyone to the virus. You may have heard that Rebbitzen Kaminetzky spent years researching crackpot conspiracy websites authored by neo-Nazis or Leftist quacks. That happens to be true but she didn't form her medical opinions from them. They are just the excuse to feed her already preconceived notion that doctors are evil incarnate. Her actual basis for all this is really sad before she set out to find a narrative she could use to fit her agenda. Look who's talking about evil after all the victims the Kaminetzkys sacrificed to measles & now the novel coronavirus.

    There is no way the camps can guarantee a safe environment! Current testing technology does not safely pinpoint the virus in people. It often takes multiple tests over time until the virus can be accurately IDed. And are they going to mandate that all the non-Jewish workers also live on campus & cannot leave?

    The scaremongering about kids draying zich arum in the summer is just like old Shmuel K who specializes in finding all kinds of frumma sounding sound bytes to tummel about while pushing his twisted philosophy.

    How ironic that the Reform movement announced this week that they will not consider opening any of their camps no matter what the government says because there are too many unknowns about the virus and therefore they will not do anything that could risk lives. How sick is this that the koifrim have a position here that is much closer to the daas of the Torah than what the Agudah Fressers are doggedly pursuing? This is modern day sacrificing of kinder to the Philly Moilech.

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  10. Hey UOJ, I enlarged your picture of the Fressers of the Round or Oval table - copycats!

    It seems that the large screen is a live video hook up - who is the white beard talking to them? And there are two Fressers immediately in front of the screen. The beard is Labish Becker, but who is the clean shaven guy?

    And how the Hell is Margo doing? I haven't seen the creep since 664 when I was passing through Romanya on the way back to Anglia for the second battle of Badon. Always the wheeler-dealer, he was trying to farkoyf me some stale raisins that he apparently had once gotten as a freebie from a Malchus welfare program. When I told him he's asking too much money, he says oh vhat da Hell, that he will open a yeshiva one day & sell them to the bochurim by lunch.

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  11. Rabbi Rudinsky of the Wesley Hills Agudah Fresser shul admits in a public letter that he's been davening with minyanim when he can arrange them and that he is gearing up for opening the shul (he also has a nearby rather large yeshiva that he might intend to include).

    He boasts that he consulted with R' Chaim Kanievsky but who cares as RCK was held hostage away from doctors almost the entire time by his grandson who was working with Philly to manipulate him. And he boasts he consulted with doctors. Which ones? The Philly groupie doctor in Lakewood who lied to BMG?

    Besides the fact that whoever participated outside his family was violating the stay at home order. For non-First Responders, Rockland County criminalized leaving the house except to buy food-medicine IF delivery is not available.

    And Earth to Rabbi Rudinsky: the gedolim (who are not controlled by Philly puppet masters) have assered minyanim in any case due to aivah.

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  12. Petty Corruption1:36 PM, May 08, 2020

    Margo takka pirated raisins that were intended for the talmidim to eat for free from a 1980s USDA program to sell them to the bochurim in the dining room.

    Does anyone know if YTT recently took CARES Act funds to put in their pockets?

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  13. My lawyers will be writing a letter to Governor Cuomo and copy his brother Chris, whom I know --- If he sanctions the opening of Jewish camps in the Catskills, I will sue the State and him personally should any child or adult get ill, or die. I see the Agudath Israel behind this, where children are inventory in their warehouses as sources of income, their lives do not really matter, as they have demonstrated time and again!

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  14. Whoa! UOJ even knows Freddo? Now that's a chiddush.

    One thing is for sure that if you get Chris angry he comes up with the most immature personal insults you've ever heard since Bungalow Putz Neuhoff was in action. He'll probably call you the punk with the fathead blog or something like that.

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  15. The Chof K family Senter who opened the Aderes Hatorah yeshiva in Israel is publicizing that he is transplanting his yeshiva to the Appalachian mountains town of New Bloomfield, PA. His plan is to, supposedly, maintain social distancing at the recently shuttered Carson Long Military Academy that he's taken over.

    https://vimeo.com/415533432

    see here

    He is inviting other yeshivaleit to join them as well.

    Someone notified the PA Health Dept. The staffer taking the call was not very interested, he even seemed to be anti-shutdowns. He tried brushing off the caller with the bogus claim that Perry County is not in the red zone. When he was pressed that it is in the red zone, he said ok he will have someone check it out. It's possible Senter is telling the truth that the Town Council is welcoming him to move in. But consider that when the 3 chochomim in Lakewood, the Mayor, the Police Chief & CEO AK decided on their own without the needed authority to open simcha halls, the State AG jumped in & immediately shut them down.

    There is also a fresser in Passaic who is pulling out every stop trying to open up his camp in the Poconos.

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  16. Bunch of Hypocrites and Worse6:26 PM, May 08, 2020

    When Margo stole the 80s raisins which the bochurim were entitled to have for free, there was no known bug infestation issue. Many years later they discovered that any raisins from kimat any type of drying process are infested. Even Hisachdus where Margo's slimy Satmar landsman Itzu Glick pulls every bogus heter out of his frisbee hat to allow bugs does not allow raisins under his shgooche.

    Where I'm going with this is old Sam Kaminetzky & his followers do not eat raisins either. And they love getting into all kinds of other frumma chumros shtick besides that.

    But when the halacha is CHAMIRA SAKANTA m'ISSURA that even sofek sakonna is very chomur, these fakers show their true colors. Their personal meshugassen come first. They really don't give a hoot about halacha. They want to demonize & stick it to doctors by sabotaging vaccinations & throw a big infection party with perhaps the deadliest virus ever known. Not only they have no compassion for all the human sacrifices that figure into their collateral damage, but it has become another end unto itself that they fight to accomplish to attain some kind of perverse geshmak.

    Someone had hinted that there is a (real) Kaminetzky motivation that is seldom discussed & widely unknown. It's sad that one of their children has Down Syndrome and it's also sad the Rebbitzen has brainwashed herself & the relatives that the "evil" doctors & "Amaleki" pharmaceutical industry is to blame. But it is a crime against humanity when they weaponize their quack beliefs to kills others through communicable diseases & pandemics.

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  17. Alas, Philly is the cult personality yeshiva where the rank & file have to follow the leader - but the head honcho doesn't listen to his own rebbi, the saintly Rav Aron Kotler ztl!

    March 22, 1953, at 10:45 PM, Dr. Jonas Salk, a Jewish researcher from Brooklyn, announced on a CBS radio program that tremendous progress was being made. He said that clinical trials were optimistic but that there was still no vaccine available. Finally, on April 12th, 1955, Salk announced that a safe and effective vaccine was now available. The entire country let out a collective sigh of relief and Dr. Salk became a national hero.
    Soon, the U.S. government went into action in regard to the Salk vaccine. On August 12th, The Poliomyelitis Vaccination Assistance Act of 1955 was passed. This established a temporary federal aid program that would help each state carry out mass inoculations with the Salk vaccine. On February 15, 1956 more funding was made available and the free vaccines were also made available to more people.

    New Jersey’s then governor, the Honorable Robert Mayner, took New Jersey’s allocation and distributed the vaccine at no charge to as many New Jersey residents as he could.

    One institution that received the vaccines was Beth Midrash Gavoha of Lakewood – then located at 617 7th Street at the corner of Forest Avenue. There were about 80 bochurim in the Yeshiva and a fledgling Kollel that numbered about one dozen.

    A nurse was dispatched to the Yeshiva to administer the vaccines, paid for by the state of New Jersey. At the time, there were both questions and dissent. “Is it safe?” “Should we take this injection?” There were a number of people that eschewed the advice of doctors and were not supportive of the vaccine. But soon enough, the dissent was rapidly dispelled.

    One of the very first people to get the vaccine, was none other than BMG’s own Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Aharon zt”l himself. He did so to dispel the notion of ignoring the advice of doctors.

    “I remember being right outside his office at the time,” recalled Rav Yaakov Schnaidman, the current Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Beis Moshe in Scranton. “There were a few other bochurim there. Rav Aharon rolled up his sleeve and received the injection. After that, there was just no more dissent.”

    Rav Aharon’s office was an outside porch that was covered and glass panes were put up around so everyone could see inside. His office door was always open. Aside from the Bais Medrash there was a room outside and Rav Aharon’s office was adjacent to it.

    Rav Yechiel Perr, Shlita, added, “Rav Aharon [zt”l], was very meticulous in listening to doctors. If a doctor instructed him to take his medication every four hours – he would look at his watch and take it every four hours – on the dot.”

    In the 1950’s there were approximately 12,000 deaths from Polio and almost a quarter million Polio cases. Taking into account the population of the United States at the time this means that about 1 in 600 people were stricken by it. In the 1960’s, on account of the polio vaccines, In the 1960’s there were less than 2500 cases, and in the entire 1970’s there were only 171 total cases. This was on account of the vaccinations. In the 1980’s there were only 100 cases. In the 1990’s there were 59 cases and in the 2000’s there only two cases.

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  18. The Agudah Fressers are not the only ones to blame for making children disposable, as the government itself has created various definitions that they know are bogus but are promoted for politico-economic reasons.

    Quarantining campers & yeshivaleit for 2 weeks meint gornisht. While there is a sizable percentage of Corona victims who are only contagious for 2 weeks, there are still many who remain contagious for up to a month. And a minority have been found contagious for up to 2 MONTHS!

    Several gedolim have pointed out that our chiyuv is not to follow government guidelines but to go as far beyond them that is required for pikuach nefesh.

    But with the Kaminetzkys riding shotgun over Torah Umesorah - Agudah, there is all this acting up where the letter released through Frischman shows their true reckless colors

    https://files.constantcontact.com/4194289d301/d161fb9a-3556-4584-91b2-92c25dcd5262.pdf

    but then a day later after a backlash they talk out the other side of their mouths - pretending to go along with what the true gedolim have advocated

    This is just like Shmuel & Sholom Kaminetzky talking out both sides of their mouths in the infamous Philly burbs mamzerus scandal, depending on who is listening.

    As UOJ once teitched up mouths of people who speak from der baideh zeiten: "IT STINKS!"

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  19. The Agudah's Corona "Constitution" leaves out important issues that the OU's touched on. Not that the OU's is ideal either, but the differences appear to be more proof that the Agudah is not taking it seriously. That just like many of us suspected it was Philly Philistine BS for public consumption.

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