Truth tellers are the Achilles heel of collective denial because they call attention to what’s swept under the rug. Thus another playbook tactic is to hush them up...

 "Time and again, society pressures people not to see, hear or speak about the elephant in the room. To maintain our own “cognitive tranquility,” we tune out, malign and shoot the messenger because they remind us of what we would rather disregard."

We’ve Hit Peak Denial. Here’s Why We Can’t Turn Away From Reality

We are living through a terrible time in humanity. Here’s why we tend to stick our heads in the sand and why we need to pull them out, fast.

We need to guard against lowering our standards for normalcy. When we mentally and emotionally recalibrate to the new normal, we also disassociate from our own humanity.

If it seems like things are kind of off these days, you’re not alone. Recently, more than 100,000 people liked a post marking the start of the pandemic that said, “[Four] years ago, this week was the last normal week of our lives.”

Objectively speaking, we are living through a dumpster fire of a historical moment. Wars are on the rise around the globe, and 2023 saw the most civilian casualties in almost 15 years.

H5N1 bird flu has jumped to cows, several farm workers have been infected, and scientists are warning about another potential pandemic. According to data from wastewater, the second biggest COVID surge occurred this winter. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates at least 24,000 people have died of COVID so far in 2024.

Last year was the hottest ever and recorded the highest number of billion-dollar weather and climate disasters. Not to mention that over the past few years, mass shootings have significantly increased, we’ve seen unparalleled attacks on democracy and science, and mental health issues have skyrocketed.

Truth be told, things were bananas even before the pandemic: just think of the Great Recession, the 2009 swine flu pandemic, and Brexit. Academics use terms like “polycrisis” and “postnormal times” to describe the breadth and scale of the issues we now face.

Welcome to the new normal, an age where many things that we used to deem unusual or unacceptable have become just what we live with. Concerningly, though, “living with it” means tolerating greater suffering and instability than we used to, often without fully noticing or talking about it. When authorities tell us to “resume normal activities” after an on-campus shooting or give guidance on how to increase our heat tolerance in an ever-hotter world, we may sense that something is awry even as we go along with it.

But what happens when overlooking and tolerating greater levels of harm becomes a shared cultural habit? Like the proverbial frog in boiling water, we acclimate to ignoring more and caring less at our own peril. In the short term, living in a state of peak denial helps us cope. In the long run, it will be our undoing. Because the danger here is desensitization: that we meet this unprecedented litany of “wicked problems,” from climate change to the rise of fascism, with passive acceptance rather than urgent collective action.

How does this happen? How do we overlook and become hardened to bad things, especially in this scientific and technological age, when we’ve never been more capable of understanding and addressing them? To resist complacency, we must first understand how it operates.

Social scientists have long investigated the social organization of denial or how we collectively achieve reality-adjacent lives in which we do not recognize serious problems or they are made to seem normal. What research has found is that a key way we come to “not see” social problems that should beg for our attention is that disturbing or threatening information is neutralized or evaded.

COVID is a good case study for illustrating the “Collective Denial Playbook” that underpins our new normal reality.

A common strategy to neutralize a social problem is to make knowing about it hard, often by restricting efforts to look into it, like scaling back COVID tracking. In April the CDC ended the requirement that hospitals report COVID admissions and occupancy data, removing one of the last tools we could use to monitor what’s happening. “We now enter the blackout phase of epidemiology” wrote science journalist Laurie Garrett on X, adding: “There will be patients, but their numbers and whereabouts will be unknown….” Disappearing is also accomplished by not alerting the public. For example, during the winter surge, we heard “crickets from the White House.” In fact, as COVID positivity and death rates rose, tweets from CDC director Mandy Cohen decreased.

If the COVID situation is tracked and the public warned, things don’t feel normal. But if we don’t monitor or mention it, then things can feel “back to normal”—fine, even.

Another tactic is minimization. How we describe and measure things shapes how we feel about them. Which is why it’s important to notice when neutralizing language enters the chat. For some time now, turns of phrase like “endemic” and “during COVID” have been common vernacular. So have refrains like “lower hospitalizations than last year.” All of this gives off an “it’s just a cold,” “mission accomplished” vibe, casting the disease into a worry-free zone that’s safely behind us.

This minimization keeps the quiet part quiet: that “the world is still in a pandemic” per the WHO; that more than 73,000 Americans died of COVID in 2023, a higher number than from car accidents or influenza; among those infected, 9 percent and counting have long COVID, a serious and often disabling condition with a disease burden comparable to cancer or heart disease, and an economic cost rivaling the Great Recession, and for which there are no approved treatments. What’s more, each infection is associated with a substantially increased risk of health issues like cognitive dysfunction, autoimmune disease and cardiovascular problems, even for mild infections.

Pre-pandemic, these statistics would have been eye-popping. Now they constitute “back to normal.” We think we no longer have a problem, when actually we’ve just changed the standard by which we deem something concerning.

Yet, to shore up collective denial, we often do more than revise the present; we also rewrite the past. So not only do we reiterate that we are better off now, we claim things were never that bad. This sort of “forgetting work,” or contesting the past to remove unwanted memories, produces a cultural amnesia about the pandemic. And in burying the past, we sidestep accountability for what went wrong and preserve the status quo by failing to implement lessons learned from our own history.

Finally, truth tellers are the Achilles heel of collective denial because they call attention to what’s swept under the rug. Thus another playbook tactic is to hush them up, often by painting them as subversives or deviants. And so those who wear masks are ridiculed, scientists reporting on COVID-19 risks are cast as fearmongers, and those with long COVID are dismissed as having anxiety disorders.

Time and again, society pressures people not to see, hear or speak about the elephant in the room. To maintain our own “cognitive tranquility,” we tune out, malign and shoot the messenger because they remind us of what we would rather disregard.

These tactics are how we get used to so many bad things, from mega-fires to insurrections.

So what can we do about our “Ignore more, care less, everything is fine!” era? We need to stop enabling it. This starts by being more attuned to our “everyday ignoring” and “everyday bystanding”—like that pinch we feel when we know we should click through a concerning headline, but instead scroll past it.

We need to work harder to catch ourselves in the act of staying silent or avoiding uncomfortable information and do more real-time course correcting.

We need to guard against lowering our standards for normalcy. When we mentally and emotionally recalibrate to the new normal, we also disassociate from our own humanity.

We need to demand that our leaders give the full truth and hold them to account. We must stand up for the silenced and stand with the silence-breakers.

To counter the new normal’s assault on normalcy, we must double down on our duty to know, to speak up, and to remember.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/weve-hit-peak-denial-heres-why-we-cant-turn-away-from-reality//

Enough Already With The Shnorrers in Lakewood - Here is someone from Israel you can really trust (Dennis Prager does)

 

  For the past 30 years these same yeshivas were bleeding Americans blind while receiving full funding -- Now they’re here yelling they need money again?
Now they’re here yelling they need money again? Now they’re here yelling they need money again?Again? Again? "Tateles gay shoin aheim"

https://youtu.be/kG3wPyANstM?si=u78VkZBbRa2f_BdL

טאטאל'ע קום שוין אהיים

*****************************************************************************

Uri Geller: Aliens built the Jerusalem Temple, may help Israel during war

 

Israeli mystifier and entertainer Uri Geller claims that aliens built monuments like Stonehenge and the biblical Temple in Jerusalem, and reaffirms the benevolent nature of these aliens.

UFO (illustrative).

Aliens built the Beit Hamikdash, the ancient Jewish Temple of Jerusalem, from biblical times, and those same aliens may very well intervene on Israel's behalf in the event that the war against Hamas would worsen, Israeli-British mystifier and entertainer Uri Geller claimed.

Geller had been responding to an incident in the United Kingdom, where protesters from Just Stop Oil vandalized Stonehenge with orange corn flour, endangering the rare lichen that lives on the stones. 

Representatives from the English Heritage charity that manages sites like Stonehenge expressed their shock over the vandalization. Geller, however, warned in an interview with the Daily Star that the damage could incite extraterrestrials to come to Earth in response. 

Though the monument is shrouded in mystery, many people believe that Stonehenge was constructed by or with the help of aliens. While modern experts disagree with these claims, many people still believe them—including Geller.

"I believe Stonehenge was built by aliens or with the help of aliens, who used advanced technology to help us," the Israeli spoon-bender told The Jerusalem Post. He added his belief that Stonehenge's purpose was to create a model of the Solar System and serve as an alien landing pad. 

Uri Geller seen in front of an Iranian flag and a missile launch (illustrative)

"I totally believe that the explanation is aliens. The site has cosmic and spiritual significance, no doubt about it," he said. 

But Stonehenge isn't the only historic landmark Geller claims was created by aliens. 

Later, in an interview with the Daily Star, the Israeli spoon-bender warned that this may upset some people.

"Many monuments, including Stonehenge, the Beit Hamikdash, and the pyramids were created by extraterrestrials, that's what I believe," Geller said. 

"There are certain cosmic focal points that have some subliminal powers. The Beit Hamikdash is a powerhouse of infinite kinds of energy."

Will aliens help Israel during war?

Geller has long claimed to have knowledge of aliens, and is firm in his belief that they are benevolent. 

In fact, Geller, who recently also claimed to have played a part in Israel's successful effort to thwart the Iranian drone and missile attack on the Jewish state back in April, believes that aliens can also play a geopolitical role in the Middle East.

Specifically, he said they might even take sides.

"I wouldn't be surprised if a bigger war breaks out, aliens might help Israel," Geller said. 

Others have claimed that aliens, should they really exist, play a bigger role on Earth than many realize. Haim Eshed, former head of the Israel Space Agency, made waves in 2020 by claiming that there exists a Galactic Federation that both Israel and the US have been dealing with for years. 

While Eshed has been largely silent on the subject since then - with Geller claiming that he "is scared, he's been instructed not to talk" - the Israeli mystifier has continued to elaborate his claims of aliens being here with peaceful intentions.

"For centuries, aliens have been trying to wake us up to our mission to save our planet and evolve as human beings, and look what's happening around the world. Do you know how many nuclear bombs we have waiting to be launched?" he asked. "I want to believe that extraterrestrials are waiting for us to lay down our arms and create a peaceful world. It's more important than ever to connect with these higher beings."

https://www.jpost.com/omg/article-807477?

Rav Wolfson was the last living talmid of my zeide Harav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, ztvk”l, the legendary Menahel of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath - My 5th Grade Rebbe - Beloved Mashgiach Ruchni - Hagaon Harav Moshe Wolfson, Zt”l - An inspiration to all that knew him!

 

BD’E – Hagaon Harav Moshe Wolfson, Zt”l, Mashgiach Ruchni of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath and Rav of Beis Medrash Emunas Yisrael

 

 

Klal Yisroel is  saddened to learn of the petirah of Hagaon Harav Moshe Wolfson, zt”l, the longtime Mashgiach Ruchni of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath and Rav of Beis Medrash Emunas Yisrael. He was 99 years old.

Rav Wolfson collapsed on Motzaei Shabbos and was rushed to the hospital, as many of his talmidim and others stormed the Heavens for his him, but his holy neshamah ascended to Shamayim.

The levayah was scheduled for Sunday morning at 8:45 a.m. in New Square; it will pass by Yeshiva Torah Vodaath, located at 425 East 9th Street, at 10:25 a.m., and continue at 11 a.m. to Beis Medrash Emunas Yisroel, located at 4310 16th Avenue in Boro Park. From there it proceeded to JFK airport for a 5:30 flight to Eretz Yisrael, where kevurah will take place in Teveria.

Rabbi Simcha Wasserman, with Aish Dos participants. Front row (R-L): Rabbi Meyer Lubin, Rabbi Moshe Wolfson, Rabbi Berel Schwartz, Rabbi Wasserman, Zissel Walkenfeld, Rabbi Shmuel Mendlowitz, Rabbi Sholom Goldstein. Second row: Meyer Strassfeld, Rabbi Yisroel Spinner, Rabbi Moshe Weitman, Rabbi Shlomo Weinberger, Rabbi Heshie Mashinsky, Yitzchak Schwinder, Rabbi Avrahom Abba Friedman. Top row: Rabbi Abish Mendlowitz, Rabbi Eliyahu Moshe Shisgal, Lennie Kestenbaum, Rabbi Milton Terebelo, Rabbi Mendel Eller

Rav Wolfson was a talmid of Harav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, zt”l, the legendary Menahel of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath. In 1943, he joined Aish Dos, an innovative program that Rav Mendlowitz developed to train Rabeim to fill positions in yeshivos and day schools across America. Thus began Rav Wolfson’s long career in chinuch. He taught in Yeshiva Torah Vodaath for many years, and was appointed as Mashgiach by Harav Yaakov Kaminetsky, zt”l, in the 1960s.

Rav Wolfson was the marah d’asra of Camp Torah Vodaath for numerous summers, where he developed a close following of talmidim who eventually established Beis Medrash Emunas Yisrael, with Rav Wolfson as the Rav. The shul became a prominent makom Torah u’tefillah, and the Mashgiach addressed the tzibbur during seudah shlishis and other occasions. Many of his drashos were published over the years as Sefer Emunas Itecha.

Yehi zichro baruch.

 

https://hamodia.com/2024/06/23/bde-harav-moshe-wolfson-ztl-mashgiach-of-yeshiva-torah-vodaas-and-rav-of-emunas-yisrael/

 

 

There will be Divrei Hesped

for the Mashgiach

Moreinu Horav

Moshe Wolfson zt"l

In our Bais Medrash

425 East 9th Street

Today - 3:30

If you are unable to make it in person

It will be livestreamed on

Torah Anytime

www.torahanytime.com/RavWolfsonHespedim

The Not So "Hebrew Union College" One-Ups Hershel Schachter - From The "Hebrew" RCA - Rabbinical Council of America...

 

SCHACHTER'S TRUMPNERS

60%  61% of American Jews who married in the last decades have married non-Jewish partners.

Hebrew Union College to admit and ordain rabbinical students in interfaith relationships, ending longstanding ban

 

Hebrew Union College- Jewish Institute of Religion's main campus is in New York City's Greenwich Village

 

Hebrew Union College, the Reform movement’s rabbinical seminary, will begin admitting and ordaining students who are in relationships with non-Jews, following a decision by its board to drop a longstanding ban on interfaith relationships for rabbinical students.

The decision brings the rules for rabbinical students at HUC in line with norms across the Reform movement, where intermarriage is prevalent. It also means that within less than a decade, three of the largest Jewish seminaries in the United States will have all begun admitting students in interfaith relationships, with only the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary continuing to bar them — a significant shift from a once widespread Jewish communal rejection of intermarriage.

HUC’s president, Andrew Rehfeld, said in an interview that the policy change — which followed a series of discussions over 18 months — reflected the school’s educational values, as well as recent data undercutting the idea that intermarriage is a death knell for Jewish identity.

“We’re not backing down from the statement that Jewish endogamy is a value,” Rehfeld said. “But we are saying that a prohibition around Jewish exogamy … is no longer rational because intermarriages can result in engaged Jewish couples.”

To replace the intermarriage ban, HUC is adopting a new requirement that students with children pledge to raise them “exclusively as Jews engaged with Jewish religious practice, education, and community.”

The commitment is in line with what Reform rabbis are asked to require of couples they wed and reflects the movement’s stance on determining who is a Jew: While historically Judaism was largely conferred through conversion or matrilineal descent, for four decades, Reform Judaism has considered any child of one Jewish parent to be Jewish as long as they are raised with a “positive and exclusive Jewish identity.”

The change at HUC comes nearly a decade after the last time the school publicly reconsidered the policy barring rabbinical students from being in interfaith relationships. Since then, two other major seminaries have dropped their own requirements: Reconstructionist Rabbinical College did so in 2015 and the pluralistic Hebrew College followed suit last year — amid increasing competition over a shrinking pool of aspiring rabbis.

Dwindling enrollment at HUC caused it to begin phasing out most operations at one of its four campuses, its original location in Cincinnati, in 2022. But Rehfeld said the admissions change was not a gambit to woo more applicants. He noted that neither RRC nor Hebrew College had expanded rapidly once they began admitting students in interfaith relationships.

“This is a principled decision about the kind of leaders we should have in the institution,” he said. “For every student that we’re going to get because of this, we risk losing students who will not come to us because of this.”

SO I PRONOUNCED HER JEWI$H - NOW SHE MAKES LATKES!

 

Andrew Rehfeld

He also emphasized that the decision’s timing was unrelated to Hebrew College’s rule change last year and to the unexpected death in December of Rabbi David Ellenson, HUC’s widely beloved former president, who was a staunch defender of the ban on interfaith relationships. Rehfeld said the process had begun in the fall of 2022, prior to the Hebrew College announcement. It had effectively concluded, he said, prior to a planned board meeting in October that was scuttled because of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

In a position paper prepared for the October meeting, HUC Provost Andrea Weiss wrote, “I believe our focus should be on our students, not their partners (if they have one),” and urged the school to give its students tools “to lead authentic, engaged, meaningful Jewish lives.”

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, who heads the Union of Reform Judaism representing the movement’s nearly 900 congregations, said he did not expect the policy change to affect many applicants directly. But he said he believed many current students and congregations would “strongly support” it.

“Many of our best rabbis and cantors were raised in homes with only one formally Jewish parent. … Many of our temple lay leaders are married to people who are not formally Jewish,” Jacobs said. “I think it’s pretty clear at this moment in time that it is possible — demonstrably more than possible — to have a deeply committed Jewish family with only one partner who is formally Jewish.”

For its critics, HUC’s ban on intermarried rabbinical students had long been seen as out of step with the Reform movement’s values. Marriages between Jews and non-Jews are prohibited under traditional Jewish law, known as halacha. But the Reform movement, which emerged in the 19th century and is by far the largest denomination in the United States, has always regarded halacha as a cultural tradition and spiritual tool — but not as binding law. In keeping with that outlook, HUC does not require students to keep kosher or observe Shabbat, making the requirement around relationships stand out.

Many people have called for change in the past. In 2007, a student named Yael Shmilovitz used her senior sermon, a rite attended by many members of the seminary community, to decry the policy and call for a broad embrace of intermarriage.

In 2012, Daniel Kirzane, now a pulpit rabbi in Chicago, likewise used his senior sermon to call for a policy change. “It flies in the face of Reform values and reflects an obsolete and narrow-minded understanding of the Jewish community,” Kirzane said about the ban. “It shuts out those who should be brought in.”

60% 61% of American Jews who married in the last decades have married non-Jewish partners.

 

“You must choose between an inclusive vision of Jewish leadership and an exclusive one,” Lippmann wrote. “Let your bold decisions to ordain women, lesbians, gay men and transgender rabbis show you the way.”

And four years ago, an aspiring rabbinical student named Ezra Samuels, then a 20-year-old college student in a relationship with a non-Jewish man, ignited an outcry after writing about feeling “crushed” after learning about the rule while exploring how to become a rabbi in the denomination in which they were raised.

“All my life, my community had told me that no matter who you are or who you love, you are equal in our community and according to the divine. But now it feels like I’ve been betrayed, lied to, misled,” Samuels wrote.

Some students have lied about or, like Lippmann, obscured their relationship status until they are ordained, at which point they are permitted to intermarry while working in the Reform movement. Rehfeld said he believed those who had lied had done so out of a principled objection to the policy. He noted that the ban meant they could not bring their whole selves to their studies and could not fully contribute to conversations around ministering to communities with many intermarried couples.

Others who were honest suffered because of it. Rehfeld recounted an applicant with a stellar resume — including a stint in the armed forces and time working in Jewish education — who was turned away after disclosing a relationship with a non-Jew and instead sought ordination elsewhere.

“It was to me the most tangible way of showing that this policy is just not consistent with our values or the society in which we live,” he said. “We are losing great leaders of the Jewish people, for reasons that make no sense.”

Rehfeld, who became president in 2018, emphasized that the decision was not easy and that there are members of the HUC community and the broader Reform movement who will be unhappy about the change. He said he thought dissatisfaction would be largely generational. Older Reform rabbis came of age at a time when intermarriage was widely feared within the movement, he said, while many younger ones are products of interfaith marriages themselves.

Rehfeld said he hoped that both camps would resist the urge to take the decision personally, especially cautioning against celebrations by “those who have been waiting for this decision” and who have decried the policy as discriminatory, language that he rejects.

“I think that’s the wrong comportment,” he said. “We need to be, in our comportment and in our reaction, respectful and not personalizing our disagreement.”

Opposition to the policy change reflects longstanding concern among American Jewish leaders that high rates of intermarriage would endanger the future of Judaism by shrinking an already small Jewish population. Jewish leaders once assumed that Jews who intermarried, and their children, would not engage in Judaism or identify with the Jewish people.

At a 1991 conference of the Jewish federations, speakers likened intermarriage to the Holocaust. Even as organizations later adopted a less hostile posture, some sociologists posited that rising intermarriage rates signified an American Jewish demographic decline. (One of the most outspoken advocates of this view was Steven Cohen, who worked at HUC until 2018, when he resigned amid allegations of sexual misconduct.)

As data has piled up, however, there is mounting evidence that intermarriage does not mean the end of Jewish identity. The 2020 Pew survey of American Jews found that nearly three-quarters of non-Orthodox Jews who married in the previous decade did so to non-Jews — and that most intermarried couples with children are raising those children Jewish. An additional 12% reported raising their kids partly Jewish.

The study did report that the Jewish identities of children raised by intermarried parents differed from those of children with two Jewish parents. The survey found that in-married Jewish couples raise their children Jewish at higher rates and more frequently with markers traditionally associated with Judaism. Advocates for embracing interfaith families say the gap can be explained in part by the tendency of Jewish institutions not to fully welcome such families.

For those advocates, HUC’s policy change is likely to register as a powerful signal of inclusion. Still, Rehfeld said some expressions of interfaith partnership would remain out of bounds as the school’s personalized admissions process continues to elicit conversations about how Judaism is experienced in applicants’ homes.

“If you say, ‘Well, on Saturday morning, we are in shul, and on Sunday morning, we go celebrate Mass,’” he said, “we would say to you, ‘Thank you, it sounds like the home and family life is not exclusively Jewish. We’re not the place for you.’”

https://www.jta.org/2024/06/20/religion/hebrew-union-college-to-admit-and-ordain-rabbinical-students-in-interfaith-relationships-ending-longstanding-ban?utm_source=JTA_Maropost&utm_campaign=JTA_special&utm_medium=email&mpweb=1161-73833-25499

TRUMP FAMILY CHRISTMAS DECEMBER 25, 2011 - NO POLITICS INVOLVED - JEWISH LAW ONLY:

https://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2011/12/trump-family-christmas-december-25-2011.html

The piercing pain and sorrow that marked Israel’s Memorial Day 2024 touched Boys Town Jerusalem students of all ages. BTJ grads have been fighting on the front lines!

 

Pain and Honor Mark BTJ Wartime Memorial Day Ceremony

Boys Town Jerusalem

The piercing pain and sorrow that marked Israel’s Memorial Day 2024 touched Boys Town Jerusalem students of all ages. At the school’s Memorial Day ceremony, over 20 recent grads now serving in IDF combat units – including many recovering from combat injuries – returned to pay tribute to fallen classmates.

 

Students spent Memorial Day visiting Mt. Herzl.

 

Earlier, BTJ students walked to the nearby Mt. Herzl Military Cemetery to recite prayers at the gravesite of IDF Corporal Ofir Testa, 21, killed at the war’s outbreak. Other BTJ grads killed in battle were Sgt. Benyamin Yona, 19, and Police Sgt. Gedif Mulugeta, 29. Current student Liel Gerafe, 19, was murdered by terrorists.

 

Ofir’s friends shared memories.

 

BTJ grad Yitzchak Marwani, 21, shared memories of his friend Ofir Testa with today’s students. “In his quiet way, Ofir tried to make a better world. This is the essence of what we were all taught at Boys Town Jerusalem.” Today Yitzchak serves in a Combat Engineering unit in Gaza, where he was recently injured.

 

BTJ grads have been fighting on the front lines

 

Yitzchak’s classmate, Infantry Unit Squadron Commander Amitay Cohen, 21, serves as a medic. At the war’s October 7th outbreak, Amitay headed south with his unit where he soon began treating injured civilians fleeing Hamas terrorists. “Once we reached the Nova Music Festival site, there were 250 dead bodies strewn everywhere. Our search found no survivors,” he said grimly.

 

Entering Gaza, Amitay bravely fought with his unit. In a recent clash with terrorists, Amitay’s unit entered a boobytrapped structure which exploded, killing three and injuring 15. Amitay gave immediate medical care to eight wounded comrades before tending to his own serious injuries. He has since been undergoing treatment in Jerusalem’s Shaarei Zedek Hospital.

 

It was important to come to the Memorial Ceremony

 

“I felt it was important to come to the BTJ Memorial Ceremony today,” Amitay shared. “My friend Ofir Testa was a happy, positive person who helped all. Today, we must believe that life will be better. We must continue living, while never forgetting the dead. Am Yisrael Chai.”

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pain-honor-mark-btj-wartime-memorial-day-ceremony-xxihf/?trackingId=TZSR%2FpwVTyC9khM44fA9%2Fw%3D%3D

 

ABOUT BOYS TOWN JERUSALEM:

https://boystownjerusalem.org/about-btj/

Living in fear as a parent of IDF soldiers --- Not Like The Parents Who Never Worry About Their Kids In Order For Bibi & Deri To Stay In Power...

Living in fear as a parent of IDF soldiers 

 

When you have sons fighting in the IDF, you live in a state of personal and permanent emotional conflict about the war and about the state of the Jewish people.

This is not an easy column to write, for several reasons. First, my wife doesn’t want me to write it. She feels it’s too personal and raises an issue that we find challenging to confront, namely, the safety of sons at war. 

Second, the Jewish concept of Ayin Harah (the evil eye,) either real or an imagined superstition, cautions against discussing certain issues so as not to jinx them. Israel is at war. Let’s pray in general but not speak about anything in particular. Third, I have a lot of anger about this particular issue. How did God allow so many Jews to die in a single day 80 years after the Holocaust and after the creation of a state and an army that are supposed to protect them? And fourth, my thoughts on the subject are not in any way fully formed.

When you have sons fighting in the IDF, you live in a state of personal and permanent emotional conflict about the war and about the state of the Jewish people. Pride and fear. Defiance and surrender. Love and hate. You’re confused. Better not to write, isn’t it?

On the one hand, we’re an American family. My son Mendy was born in Oxford, England, where I served as the Rebbe’s shaliach (emissary) and rabbi at the university, and my son Yosef was born in Englewood, NJ. What the heck are my American sons doing at war in the Middle East against savage terrorists?

On the other hand (and I know I now sound like Tevye the milkman,) don’t all Jews have to bear the burden of Israel and the Jewish people’s security? Then again, why my sons, who actually had the choice not to serve – especially our elder son, currently in an active war theater, who sustained a serious training injury and was released from combat duty only to spend years strengthening the injury in order to reenlist?

An IDF soldier salutes the grave of a fallen soldier at the Har Herzl military cemetery 

 

But after spending a day at the Nova festival site, which my daughter Cheftziba said reminded her of our visit to Auschwitz, and Kibbutz Nir Oz, near the Rafah border, where I saw the charred ruins of homes that resembled the remnants of the Warsaw ghetto, I returned feeling dejected and depressed. As we listened to the non-stop booms of what appeared to be Israeli tanks and artillery engaged in combat in Rafah, a mere five kilometers away, where the IDF was striving to establish Never Again as a tangible policy rather than a mere slogan, I found myself grappling with the question of why my own sons are in such danger.

After hearing the accounts of entire families burned alive and young women raped, as well as visiting the freshly dug grave of Shani Louk, to whose memory I dedicated a Torah – with Robert Kennedy, Jr. speaking with her parents at their moshav – I had to come to terms with the reason why every Jewish man and woman on Earth must be invested in the fight for Israel’s survival.

What changes when you send your children to serve?

When you have sons at war, your deepest values and political principles are immediately compromised. I have been steadfastly opposed to any ceasefire with Hamas for the most obvious of reasons. If Hamas survives, there will be another October 7 – plain and simple. They say it outright, and their barbarity and savagery easily equal that of the Nazis, with one major difference: whereas the Nazis feared future international tribunals and therefore covered their crimes, Hamas broadcast their atrocities to the world, secure in the knowledge that an immoral UN would later indict the Israeli prime minister and defense minister rather than the terrorists.

However, when it’s your sons fighting the terrorists, you pray for an immediate ceasefire, whatever the cost. This is why I assume that it isn’t the hostages’ families, facing something infinitely worse than we are, or the IDF parents, who can make these decisions alone. Even concerning odious, terror-funding Qatar, which I have fought for seven years in global media and which, according to The New York Times, hacked my emails in retribution, you start to think that even these monsters might play some positive role in negotiating a ceasefire. (They won’t. They are liars and murderers from whom the US must remove their Air Force base, once and for all.)

Then there’s the anger. I love the Jewish people, and I love being a Jew. But when you return to the US and see how few of us American Jews shoulder the burden of Israel’s defense, you become instantly judgmental. Why were my sons naive enough to enlist? Why aren’t they working on Wall Street, making money, or building a tech startup? And how pathetic are we American Jews to believe that dining at plush, five-star hotels in Jerusalem as smiling tourists and donating $1,000 to Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, which hasn’t even bought a single ballistic helmet or bullet-proof vest for the soldiers, somehow passes for real support of Israel? (Strangely, the FIDF claims that their lawyers don’t allow it, which begs the question: why do they exist at all. Or maybe they should find new attorneys.)

YOU KNOW that these emotions are wrong, and you try and fight them.

But the anger at God is real and, perhaps, justified. The word Israel literally translates as “he who fights with God,” and it gives you a mandate to do just that, much as my wife chooses the opposite approach of complete trust in God, reciting Psalms for our sons throughout the day. I’m angry at the Creator. What, Lord, do You want from the Jewish people? Almighty God, are you serious that we alone, as a nation, must die in order to live? Do we have to fight just to survive? Are Swedish kids fleeing booby-trapped buildings in order to breathe? Are Australian kids frolicking at Bondi Beach suddenly called to dodge drone strikes at their borders? Are Belgian parents mourning their 20-year-old sons at their graves? What do you want from us, Lord? And how long will this go on?

For thousands of years, God, we have been slaughtered, crucified, and cremated. Can you tell us, Oh Lord, that there really is some higher plan for this?

We have visited so many families who have buried children in Israel. Remarkably, they informed me that this is the “tax” they must pay to restore ancient Israel and live in our ancestral homeland. Almighty God, is such a tax fair in any way whatsoever? When the American colonists faced a tax on their tea, they rebelled. What kind of God demands the very lives of our children? Who can live like this?

On Shavuot, just days after my father’s fourth yahrzeit (annual date of death,) I read the Ten Commandments from a Torah with a crowd of some 100,000 people. As I did so, I began to believe that we Jews maintain our Judaism solely to embarrass God into doing so Himself. We do not murder, Oh Lord. So why do you? We keep Shabbat. So why don’t you? October 7, 2024, fell on the Sabbath. Could you not, in your infinite power, have prevented the desecration of the Sabbath on that horrific day? We, Oh Lord, cradle your sacred Torah in our arms on the holiday of Simhat Torah to show our adoration for its sacred text. Why, God, do you not do the same? How will we ever enjoy Simhat Torah again? And even as you allowed the sacrilege and defilement of your Torah on October 7 – Simchat Torah – we will continue to dance. We will dance again, even if you try to stop us. We will keep your Torah, Oh Lord, even when you degrade it. And perhaps, as you watch us crying and dancing, you will follow our lead and allow us to dance again, undeterred.

WE ARE staying in a hotel where we are the only tourists. We are here in Israel, hoping, God willing, that our son will be released from the theater of war so we can see him. The rest of the hotel is populated by refugees from the North – dozens of families who have lived there for eight months. On Shabbat, a rumor began circulating throughout the hotel that eight soldiers had been murdered. My wife and I began to shudder and tremble.

The news did not report what had occurred. The families, so many of whom also have sons in harm’s way, told us not to worry; it was only a rumor.  I hurried to the residence of a government minister I am friendly with, and he verified, while we sat trembling, which units had sustained damage. We confirmed it was not our sons’ units. We wanted to feel relief. We did. But at whose expense? Eight other families have been destroyed. Are we Jews not all one family?

Miraculously, after the Sabbath, our son, knowing that we were in hell, called us from a military phone to tell us he was OK. The sound of his voice was the sweetest thing I’d ever heard. I gave thanks to God for his benevolence and kindness. However, not eight, but 10 families were grieving because that was how many soldiers died in one day on Shabbat, the day that God said was his sacred day. As we gave thanks to God for the safety of our son, the earth swallowed those 10 soldiers whole, putting their families in an everlasting hell.

And so Jewish history continues, with no end in sight. We Jews live in a land where, to survive, we pay with our lives, and in a world that condemns us as Nazis even as we bury our children, who died in self-defense.

When my hero, mentor, and dearest friend Elie Wiesel died in 2016, I took my children on a three-month trip to the killing fields of Europe. The world’s most famous Holocaust survivor had died. The witnesses to the Holocaust were disappearing, and my children, including our seven-year-old daughter, needed to see what had happened before the firsthand witnesses were all gone.

My daughter Rochel Leah, today one of America’s most prominent Jewish social media influencers and fighters for Israel, grew more upset as the trip from hell, which would eventually be memorialized in my book Holocaust Holiday, dragged on. In Budapest, which witnessed the complete decimation of its community in the summer of 1944, she finally confronted me. “Tatty, why did you bring me here? I just finished a year of seminary in Israel, where I witnessed a living, joyous Judaism. But you destroyed it. You brought me to a continent-wide cemetery of Jewishness called Europe.” With futility, I attempted to comfort her. I knew she was right. Were we a triumphant or a tragic nation? But at least there was Israel. A Jewish rebirth. A reborn Jewish nation reestablished in our ancient homeland with an army to protect us.

But as I walked through the giant cemetery of Nova and looked at the hundreds of faces of the beautiful young Jews slaughtered there, and as I was led through the blood-soaked houses of Nir Oz, and as I prayed with Nissim Louk at his daughter Shani’s freshly dug grave, it struck me. Even Israel has become a giant Jewish cemetery. 

And I knew then that there was only one solution: fight, fight, fight. Fight for Jewish survival. Fight for Jewish continuity. Fight the terrorists. Fight the antisemites. Fight the UN. Fight the European Union. Fight the vile, entitled Hollywood set who condemn our struggle for self-defense as genocide. Fight the blood libels. Fight the haters.

Never capitulate. Never lose faith in God. And never give in.

Israel is the greatest miracle of the Jewish people in 2,000 years. And no matter how much the world wants to take it from us, we will never surrender. 

I'm Not A Fan Of The Writer - But I Share His Sentiments On This Topic: 

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-806771

Why do Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jews so adamantly decline to serve in the military—and could that change? A communal leader walks us through the deliberations taking place

 For Ḥaredim, this is an unbelievable trauma. Perhaps we don’t think about this every day when we wake up, but ultimately the success of secular Zionism in establishing the Jewish state is a real trauma in the ḥaredi mind, because pre-state, one of the principle arguments against Zionism was that it’s never going to work. (So said the Agudath Israel, R' Elchonon Wasserman, R'Aron Kotler - And no religious Jew should go there to escape the Holocaust) How can it possibly work, that a bunch of secular Jews will establish the Jewish sovereignty, the political representation of the Jews? 

In Israel, nearly all Jewish citizens are required to serve in the Israel Defense Forces or to perform national service—nearly all, that is, except for haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews. Instead, following a deal worked out early on in the state's existence, young haredi men are permitted to study in yeshiva after high school and thereby avoid military service. 

That imbalance has been the source of much civil strife in Israel over the years, but since October 7 it has taken on a different tone. Previously, it was a question of fairness; now, it's one of military need. Israel needs more soldiers, and haredi communities could provide them. This issue is ostensibly part of what broke up Israel's unity government last week.

Why are so many Israeli Haredim—particularly haredi leaders—so opposed to IDF service? And how could that change? Several years ago, Mosaic brought the haredi rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer on its podcast to answer these questions. In the wake of October 7, understanding the haredi perspective on the IDF, and what might push it to evolve, is even more critical today. Just click here to listen.

Mandatory army service plays an essential function within Israeli civic culture, absorbing and equalizing Ashkenazi, Mizraḥi (Middle Eastern), religious, secular, male, female, Ethiopian, Russian, Druze and more. In the IDF, all of these identities step back and create room for a national Israeli identity to step forward.

“Rabbi Wasserman, Rabbi Kotler, Rabbi Rottenberg from Antwerp, rabbis from Czechoslovakia and Hungary were unanimous in rejecting any proposal for a “Jewish State” on either side of the Jordan River, even if it were established as a religious state because such a regime would be a form of heresy in our faith in the belief in the coming of the Messiah, and especially since this little “Jewish” state would be built on heresy and desecration of the Name of G-d.

 https://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2012/02/we-must-keep-in-mind-that-we-will-be.html

*(The podcast was recorded July 2021 --- Some of the rabbi's ideas, while well-intentioned, have no place in today's need of every able young man to serve their country in this post October 7 world)* PM

Almost every Jewish community in Israel serves in the IDF, except one: the ḥaredi (ultra-Orthodox) community. Seventy years ago, Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, famously gave ḥaredi leaders an official exemption from compulsory national service, an exemption that persists to this day, along with much accompanying controversy. On this week’s podcast, the ḥaredi leader Yehoshua Pfeffer, himself a rabbinic judge, asks whether that exemption is just. In conversation with Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver, he explores the background behind the reluctance to serve, and brings us inside the debate currently unfolding within Israel’s Orthodox communities about the fulfillment of civic obligation and moral duty.

Excerpt (27:57-29:30):

The melting pot idea of the army didn’t just evaporate into nothing. It morphed and changed, it evolved over the years, but the army still remains very much a melting pot, it still has an educational corps, it still has a vision. That vision has shifted over the years, and now it includes a certain gendered vision, it includes a whole plethora of other aspects, but once again, the ḥaredi society that prides itself on its isolationism, that prides itself on being an educational system that’s not exposed to all of these trends and ideas, has a lot of trouble in going into the IDF. 

Perhaps the final consideration, which might be the main one, is this ambivalence towards engagement with the state of Israel. The state of Israel is still a secular state. For Ḥaredim, this is an unbelievable trauma. Perhaps we don’t think about this every day when we wake up, but ultimately the success of secular Zionism in establishing the Jewish state is a real trauma in the ḥaredi mind, because pre-state, one of the principle arguments against Zionism was that it’s never going to work. (So said the Agudath Israel, R' Elchonon Wasserman, R'Aron Kotler - And no religious Jew should go there to escape the Holocaust) How can it possibly work, that a bunch of secular Jews will establish the Jewish sovereignty, the political representation of the Jews? 

But hey, they did, it worked, it was successful. Not just was it successful, but it has long term stability, it’s there. And to be engaged in the IDF is to be a part of the state in the deepest possible way. It’s to be together, it’s to say “we’re a part of this.” I think it’s a step that ḥaredi society needs to go towards for its own sake and for the sake of Israel, but it’s a tough step. 

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israel, Ultra-Orthodox

 

https://mosaicmagazine.com/

Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things

‘Parasites’ who ‘desecrate God’s name’ --- Reiss estimated that of more than 60,000 Haredi men between 18 and 26 who are indefinitely postponing IDF service because Torah is their profession, about 30% have completely dropped out and “don’t even know how to find the yeshiva where they are registered as full-time students.”

 

Meanwhile, over 60,000 Haredi men between the ages of 18 and 26, many of whom fit for military service, avail themselves of the Torah-is-my-profession exemption. Not all devote their productive hours to Torah study.

The discrepancy has led to public outcry.

A video of hundreds of military-age Haredi men sitting in Ramat Gan’s National Park on the evening of June 1, watching an open-air screening of the UEFA Champions League final between Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund went viral on social media. Comments included, “Parasites,” “Desecration of God’s name,” “My son is serving and didn’t get permission to watch the game,” and, “So soccer takes precedence over studying 

 

'It was important to him to contribute to the Jewish people'

 

A yeshiva that preps Haredi men for IDF service mourns first graduate to fall in battle

 

As Israeli society debates mandatory ultra-Orthodox enlistment amid war, Staff Sgt. Bezalel Kovach’s life and death present a new view of what it means to belong to the community

Staff Sgt. Bezalel Zvi Kovach Z"L, left, with Rabbi Maj. (res) Shimon Hartman

 

On Wednesday, May 22, Staff Sgt. Bezalel Zvi Kovach, 20, was critically wounded while fighting in Gaza. Four days later he succumbed to his wounds at Soroka Medical Center.

Kovach was the first to fall in battle among graduates of Chedvata, a yeshiva that prepares Haredi men for IDF duty.

If fatal casualty rates are an indication which segments of society are doing their fair share in Israel’s defense, the Kovach family’s loss is a step toward balancing inequality between ultra-Orthodox or Haredi and non-Haredi Israelis.

“The soldier Bezalel Kovach fought in Gaza out of a commitment to being a part of the Israeli story, and he embodies the educational legacy I want for our students,” said Rabbi Yonatan Reiss, who created and runs Chedvata.

In recent months, as the uncompromising Haredi political leadership’s opposition to a mandatory military draft threatens to topple Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, Reiss, a member of the Belz Hasidic movement, has been making frequent media appearances on Israeli TV dressed in full Hasidic garb with long sidelocks framing his face.

Lawmakers early Tuesday voted 63-57 to apply “continuity” to a bill from the previous Knesset dealing with the military service of yeshiva students, reviving the contentious legislation amid the ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza.

“As a member of the Haredi community, I can tell you that we excel at volunteering and that’s really wonderful, but volunteering is not the same as taking responsibility, with all due respect,” said Reiss.

“The day members of the Haredi community commit, truly commit to three years of service, to being a part of what’s happening here — as Bezalel did — the day they start serving their nation… or even commit to working in a hospital, wherever they feel comfortable, wherever they feel their Haredi identity is respected, that’s the day you’ll see Haredim in the labor market, that’s the day Haredim will be fully integrated and that’s the day they will understand what it means to be an integral part of the Jewish people,” he said.

Kovach’s funeral was conducted in strict accordance with the traditions of Jerusalem’s Perushim (separatists) community, founded by disciples of the Vilna Gaon, Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman, who immigrated to Israel from Lithuania in the 1800s.

The three-volley salute, flower bouquets and other obsequies of IDF burial protocol were absent. The funeral was conducted at the Givat Shaul cemetery, not at Mt. Herzl Military Cemetery.

Kovach’s battalion commander, Lt. Gen. Shlomo Shiran, gave a eulogy before a mostly male crowd, some dressed in black suits and hats, others in olive green military uniforms.

One of the mourners present at the funeral was Yehuda Segal, a close friend of Kovach who grew up in the same Haredi neighborhood, learned with him in the Chedvata Yeshiva and served in the same battalion, Netzah Yehuda, that was designed to cater to Haredi customs.

Segal said Kovach, a squad commander, was the most selfless person he had ever met.

“He was the type of guy who you could wake up at three in the morning and he would be there with a cigarette and a can of Coke and encourage you,” said Segal. “He had this amazing spirit, totally selfless, always there for others, especially his soldiers. It didn’t matter whether that person was Jewish or non-Jewish. ‘So what if he is a gentile,’ he would say when guys pointed this out to him, ‘Hashem [God] created him too.’”

Segal recounted how, while visiting Kovach’s family during the week of Jewish ritual mourning, he met a young Haredi man who had never heard of the Netzah Yehuda battalion.

“I told him how we combine commitment to Judaism with army service, the holy with the profane, contributing to the nation with learning Torah — that the two don’t contradict each other,” said Segal.

“He looked at me like he couldn’t believe what I was telling him. I showed him pictures of Bezalel — I guess he thought he would see someone with dreadlocks and earrings, and suddenly he sees a guy in uniform wearing a four-cornered garment with fringes, sitting during guard duty learning [the teachings of Rabbi Nachman of Breslev],” said Segal. “The guy said, ‘Wow, I didn’t know that was possible.’”

Segal noted that in the days between Kovach’s injury and his death, prayer rallies for his recovery were held in Kovach’s strictly Haredi Ramot Dalet Jerusalem neighborhood.

“It can tell you that there will be guys from the neighborhood, and not just one or two, who will follow Bezalel’s example and enlist. Attitudes are changing,” said Segal.

‘Parasites’ who ‘desecrate God’s name’

 

 

But if Haredi attitudes toward military service are changing, the pace is glacial.

In all, there are fewer than 300 students enrolled at Chedvata’s different programs. Another 60 graduates are serving in the IDF.

Based on data provided by the Israel Democracy Institute and statements made by IDF officials in Knesset meetings, despite annual population growth of four percent — the fastest of any group in Israel — Haredi IDF enlistment has remained relatively steady since 2018 at about 1,200, just 10% of those eligible for service in 2023. And many of these men come from the fringes of Haredi society — yeshiva dropouts, children of newcomers to Orthodoxy, boys from modern-minded families with high school matriculation, new immigrants from non-Haredi communities.

Despite attempts by the IDF, public figures and social activists — both Haredi and not — to encourage IDF enlistment, a painful chasm separates those Israeli families who live in fear of the knock on the door from an IDF death notification officer and the vast majority of Haredi families who don’t.

Since the 1950s, a political arrangement anchored in a series of laws and government decisions has allowed Haredi men to postpone mandatory military service until they are too old to be drafted. They need to declare Torah study to be their full-time occupation and commit to remaining unemployed. The state provides those who study with modest stipends. Yeshivot are supposed to be audited for attendance. But tens of thousands of able-bodied men are said to be fictively registered at a yeshiva in order to receive funds but never set foot inside.

For the embattled Jewish state, this arrangement has become increasingly untenable.

Israel faces myriad military threats: the war in Gaza, escalation on the Lebanese border, drone and missile attacks by Iran-backed militias in Yemen and Iraq, the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, the uptick in Palestinian terrorism in Judea and Samaria. Overwhelming defense burdens are being shouldered by those who do serve — along with their spouses, children and parents, who must cope with the economic, physical and emotional stress of having a loved-one away from home for prolonged periods of time exposed to existential dangers.

Since October 7, 299 soldiers and one police officer have been killed during the ground offensive against Hamas and amid operations along the Gaza border. A civilian Defense Ministry contractor has also been killed in the Strip. About the same number of soldier deaths took place during the October 7 invasion, when thousands of terrorists brutally murdered 1,200 people in southern Israel, the vast majority of them civilians, and kidnapped 251 to the Gaza Strip, where roughly 120 — many of them soldiers — are still being held.

Family and friends of Israeli soldier Master Sgt. (res) Nahman Natan Hertz, 31, attend his funeral at the Mount Herzl Military Cemetery in Jerusalem on May 7, 2024. Hertz was killed in a Hezbollah drone strike on Metula

Meanwhile, over 60,000 Haredi men between the ages of 18 and 26, many of whom fit for military service, avail themselves of the Torah-is-my-profession exemption. Not all devote their productive hours to Torah study.

The discrepancy has led to public outcry.

A video of hundreds of military-age Haredi men sitting in Ramat Gan’s National Park on the evening of June 1, watching an open-air screening of the UEFA Champions League final between Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund went viral on social media. Comments included, “Parasites,” “Desecration of God’s name,” “My son is serving and didn’t get permission to watch the game,” and, “So soccer takes precedence over studying Torah?”

READ ENTIRE ESSAY:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-yeshiva-that-preps-haredi-men-for-idf-service-mourns-first-graduate-to-fall-in-battle/?utm_source=The+Weekend+Edition&utm_campaign=weekend-edition-2024-06-16&utm_medium=email