“For these things I weep…” Though written 88 years ago, Rabbi Amiel’s essay continues to resonate in our time.

 

Mizrachi and Agudat Yisrael: Enemies or Allies?

 

 Rabbi Moshe Avigdor Amiel

One of the first rabbis to join the Mizrachi movement, Rabbi Moshe Avigdor Amiel (1882–1945) was one of the great writers and public preachers of his time, whose oratorical skills could move even the most hardened hearts. In 1920, he was elected as one of the delegates to represent Mizrachi of Poland at the Mizrachi World Convention in Amsterdam. He made such an impression upon the Jewish community that he was soon appointed Rabbi of Antwerp, one of the largest and richest Jewish communities at the time.

In 1936, Rabbi Amiel made Aliyah in order to serve as Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, the largest Jewish community in the Yishuv, where he worked to improve relations between the religious and secular segments of the community. As Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Amiel founded Yeshiva HaYishuv HaChadash, a yeshiva high school which combined religious and secular studies. This yeshivah, later named in Rabbi Amiel’s memory, was used as the model for the Bnei Akiva high schools later established throughout Israel. 

One of Mizrachi’s most penetrating thinkers, Rabbi Amiel was troubled by the often contentious relationship between Mizrachi and Agudat Yisrael, founded in 1912 to strengthen Orthodox institutions in opposition to the Zionist movement and Mizrachi. In this powerful 1934 essay, Rabbi Amiel senses the impending destruction of European Jewry and calls upon Mizrachi and Agudat Yisrael to find common ground in a spirit of brotherhood. Though written 88 years ago, Rabbi Amiel’s essay continues to resonate in our time.

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Anyone who desires to speak the truth is forced to admit that we at Mizrachi, with our limited strength, will not accomplish very much if we act alone. If we wish to avoid the fate of יִרְעֶה עַד שֶׁיִּסְתָּאֵב (an animal that becomes unfit for a sacrifice and is sent out to pasture until it dies [Mishnah Temurah 3:3]), we must seek out partners to assist us in our holy work – whether we want to or not.

Where will we find these partners? Will we find them among those on the left who continue to distance themselves from us and our values? It is clear that there is only one source to which we can turn: to those on the right.

“A partnership with Agudat Yisrael?” you will ask with skepticism, “Is such a thing possible?” The truth is that the time has come to rethink our relationship with Agudat Yisrael.

Many people from our camp mistakenly believe that Mizrachi was established primarily to battle against the Agudah; that this milchemet mitzvah (obligatory war) is not merely a means to an end but rather an end in itself and the central purpose of Mizrachi’s existence. I know it is true that there are many groups within Agudat Yisrael who feel that the entire purpose of the Agudah is to battle against Mizrachi, but one wrong does not justify another.

Though Mizrachi and the Agudah disagree on several matters, both parties fly the flag of Torah and the spirit of Torah. Unfortunately, the relations between them are not at all in the spirit of Torah, whose “ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace” (Mishlei 3:17), nor do these battles add to the glory of Torah. The battle with the Agudah is not a milchemet mitzvah, nor is it even a milchemet reshut (optional war)! The fighting between us brings destruction to the entire Torah world, degrading the glory of Torah and our community and thereby strengthening those on the left who oppose us and laugh as we fight amongst ourselves. 

Did we at Mizrachi not publicize, soon after our founding, the following platform: “The purpose of our association is to draw close and not to distance, to build and not to destroy, to walk in ways of pleasantness and peace, to respect the honor of our opponents and to make peace among the various parties.” Did we intend for these words to guide only our relationship with those on the left? Was our intention regarding Agudat Yisrael to distance and not to draw close, to reject even those views of theirs that are correct and to judge them always unfavorably? Is there really nothing positive that we can learn from the Agudah?

On the other hand, does Agudat Yisrael not see that in the new Yishuv of Eretz Yisrael, Mizrachi alone bears the burden of battling for the glory of Torah against our [internal] enemies, “those who ravaged and ruined you who come from you” (Yishayahu 49:17), who wish to uproot the Torah from Israel? How can the Agudah watch all this from afar and sit on its hands, content with doing nothing? Has the Agudah given notice that it cares not for what happens in the broader Jewish community of Israel? The Agudah restricts its focus to Poland, but if, G-d forbid, Eretz Yisrael is built according to the spirit of the secular camp that seeks to uproot Torah, will this not detrimentally impact the Jews of Poland? Ultimately, Eretz Yisrael will become the center of worldwide Jewry, and if Eretz Yisrael is not ours, what will become of the exile?

If Eretz Yisrael is built in the spirit of Torah it will be the greatest possible sanctification of G-d’s name. And if, G-d forbid, it is built in the spirit of idolatry, it will be the greatest desecration of G-d’s name since the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash. Does the responsibility for the future of Eretz Yisrael not fall upon all of the faithful believers of Israel?

“We toil and they toil, we awaken early and they awaken early…” (Berachot 28b). Mustn’t we learn from those on the secular left who used to be divided into different groups like Tze’irei Tziyon and Poalei Tziyon, but for the good of the movement gave up their unique names and united to become one federation of workers for the Land of Israel? Why are only the Torah Jews torn into different factions that cannot work together? Why can’t we join together to form a federation to build a holy Eretz Yisrael? We do not have to combine into one organization in order to work closely together!

A section in “Hahed” newspaper (December 1932 edition) covering Mizrachi and Agudah news. Hahed was published in Eretz Yisrael between 1926 and 1952, and tried to encourage a Zionist spirit among Charedi Jews.

I am reminded of a sad story shared by the rabbis (Gittin 58a): “There was an incident involving the son and the daughter of Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha the High Priest, who were taken captive and sold into slavery to two different masters. After some time the two masters met in a certain place. This master said: I have a male slave whose beauty is unmatched in all of the world, and that master said: I have a female slave whose beauty is unmatched in all of the world.

“The two masters said: Come, let us marry these two slaves to one another and divide the children born to them between us, as they will certainly be very beautiful. They secluded them in a room. The young man sat in one corner and the young woman sat in the other corner. He said: ‘I am a priest and the descendant of High Priests. Shall I marry a female slave?’ And she said: ‘I am the daughter of a priest and the descendant of High Priests. Shall I be married to a male slave?’ And they wept all through the night. When dawn arrived they recognized each other and fell on each other and wept until their souls departed. And with regard to them, Yirmiyahu lamented: ‘For these things I weep; my eye, my eye runs down with water, for my comforter is far from me’ (Eicha 1:16).”

How painful is this story! A brother and sister, both suffering and both the children of the same father and mother, find themselves together in a room. But instead of working together to find a way to escape from their suffering, “this one sat in one corner and that one sat in the other corner,” each one taking pride in their own yichus (genealogy) and demeaning the other. Ultimately they recognize each other, but only after it is too late to escape. The only thing left for them is to weep together until “their souls departed.”

Mizrachi and Agudat Yisrael, the two halves of the religious community in our time, are threatened with destruction by both our external enemies and the evil winds that blow within our own nation. But instead of working together to ensure the Torah is not forgotten among the people of Israel, G-d forbid, each camp sits in its own corner, insulting and degrading the other. I fear that when the time comes and we finally recognize that we are brothers, there won’t be anything left to save.

With regard to them, Yirmiyahu lamented: “For these things I weep…”

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Crisis Unites Mizrachi, Agudah

February 23, 1939

See Original Daily Bulletin From This Date

United action on behalf of Palestine has been agreed upon by the Mizrachi, religious Zionist organization, and the Agudath Israel, religious non-Zionist body, it was announced here today by the leaders of the two groups. A joint proclamation issued by Rabbi Meir Berlin, for the Mizrachi, and Dr. Jacob Rosenheim, for the Agudath Israel, declared: “In these critical times, when the fate of the Jewish nation hangs in the balance and the future of the homeland is a matter of grave concern, we have resolved to unite in great emergency efforts for strengthening the influence of the Torah tradition in the Holy Land.”

https://mizrachi.org/hamizrachi/mizrachi-and-agudat-yisrael-enemies-or-allies/

 

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik Leaves Agudath Yisrael for Mizrachi

For the first time in the annals of ‎our ‎exile, Divine Providence has amazed our enemies with the astounding discovery that Jewish ‎blood ‎is not cheap!… If we want to courageously defend our continued national and ‎historical ‎existence… The Torah has always taught that a man is permitted, indeed, has a sacred obligation, to ‎defend ‎himself… ‎Public and private honor is ‎dependent upon the possibility of defending one’s life and one’s honor. ‎A people that cannot ‎defend its freedom and tranquillity is neither free nor independent. The third ‎of the phrases of ‎Divine redemption is “And I shall redeem you with an outstretched hand and ‎with great ‎judgments” (Shemot 6:6). Thank G-d we have lived to see the day when, with the help ‎of G-d, ‎Jews have it within their power to defend themselves.‎

Let us not forget that the poison of Hitlerite antisemitism (which made Jews fair game to all) ‎still ‎permeates this generation, which looked with equanimity upon the horrible scene of ‎the ‎suffocation of millions in gas chambers as a normal event that need not be challenged. ‎The ‎antidote for this venom that poisoned minds and dulled hearts is the readiness of the State ‎of ‎Israel to defend the lives of its citizens. Listen! My Beloved Knocks!

● Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Kol Dodi Dofek, Yom HaAtzmaut 1956.

In 1935, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik submitted his candidacy to become the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv as the representative of Agudath Yisrael. Less than a decade later, in 1944, Rabbi Soloveitchik was the chairman of the Central Committee of the Religious Zionists of America. Rabbi Soloveitchik’s shift in allegiance from Agudath Yisrael to Mizrachi resulted from a frank and painful reevaluation of his philosophy in response to the Holocaust. Witnessing the destruction of European Jewry, Rabbi Soloveitchik came to believe that Mizrachi’s activist approach to building a Jewish future in the Land of Israel had saved Judaism and the Jewish people from extinction.

In a 1962 address to the Religious Zionists of America, Rabbi Soloveitchik explained:

I was not born into a Zionist household. My parents’ ancestors, my father’s house, my teachers and colleagues were far from the Mizrachi Religious Zionists… My links with Mizrachi grew gradually; I had my doubts about the validity of the Mizrachi approach… I built an altar upon which I sacrificed sleepless nights, doubts and reservations. Regardless, the years of the Hitlerian Holocaust, the establishment of the State of Israel, and the accomplishments of the Mizrachi in the Land of Israel, convinced me of the correctness of our movement’s path. The altar still stands today, with smoke rising from the sacrifice upon it… Jews like me… are required to sacrifice on this altar their peace of mind as well as their social relationships and friendships.

● Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Rav Speaks: Five Addresses on Israel, History and the Jewish People (Judaica Press, 2002) pp. 34–36.

https://mizrachi.org/hamizrachi/rabbi-joseph-b-soloveitchik-leaves-agudath-yisrael-for-mizrachi/

 

Two Giants &  Visionary Fervent Zionists - Both Were Nifter (Passed Away) the Third Day Of Elul.

אין בדעתי כמורה וכמחנכת להשכיח מלד תלמידינו את כל אשר באתנו, לא את גזרת תתנ"ו, ולא את ספרד. ולא את גזרת ת"ח ובודאי לא את השואה של זמננו ולא את דברי ר' יהודה הלוי: יונה נשאת על כנפי נשרים...

 

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 Boys Town Jerusalem was founded in 1949 by Rabbi Alexander Linchner (1908–1997),^[10] a native of Brooklyn, New York, and son-in-law of Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz.^[11] Linchner sought to establish a home for child Holocaust survivors,^[12] war refugees, and impoverished immigrants.^[13] He was encouraged by his father-in-law, who urged him from his deathbed in 1948 "to do something for the chinuch (education) of children in Israel".^[14] Linchner based his educational model on the Torah im Derech Eretz (Torah study combined with work) approach articulated by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch.^[3][10]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys_Town_Jerusalem

https://boystownjerusalem.org/

The parents criticized the MMR vaccine - So Did "Daas Toirah" Nepo-Kids - in Philadelphia & Lakewood!

 

Anti-vax parents say ‘measles wasn’t that bad’ after daughter dies in outbreak

The parents criticised the MMR vaccine 

The mum and dad of a six-year-old girl who died from measles have no regrets about refusing to give their children the MMR vaccine.

Kaylee, the young daughter of the Texan parents, became the first measles death in the US for a decade on February 26.

Despite their heartbreak, the couple insisted measles ‘is good for the body’ and suggested parents shouldn’t give their children the vaccine because the disease ‘wasn’t that bad.’

The measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, which reduces the risk of catching measles 97 percent, is first given to children around the 12 month mark.

The parents, who belong to a Mennonite community in west Texas, spoke with Children’s Health Defense (CHD), an anti-vaccine group founded by controversial US health chief Robert F Kennedy Jr.

All five of their unvaccinated children became ill with measles a few weeks ago.

While four of the kids were not seriously ill, six-year-old Kaylee died from ‘complications’ related to the virus.

She developed pneumonia in her left lung and died soon after being put on a ventilator.

The parents were upset by their child’s death but defended their choice not to give their children the MMR vaccine

Their other children then became ill with measles days after Kaylee’s funeral, but all survived.

Despite the family tragedy, the visibly upset parents were happy with their decision not to vaccinate their children.

Kaylee’s mother, who was unnamed, told the CHD: ‘We would absolutely not take the MMR [vaccine].

‘The measles wasn’t that bad. They got over it pretty quickly.’

The parents also claimed it is good for young children to be infected with measles.

Speaking partly in English and partly through a German dialect translator, they added: ‘There are doctors who can help with measles, it is not as bad as they are making it out to be.

‘The measles is good for the body, because the measles helps to build the immune system in the long run.’

Measles is currently ripping through areas of Texas and neighbouring New Mexico, with more than 300 people infected.

Cases are surging in particular in Gaines County, where the large Mennonite community has low childhood vaccination rates.

The vaccination rate in the area is 82 percent, which is far below the 95 percent benchmark needed to maintain herd immunity.

Vaccination rates in England for the first dose of MMR at age 5 were 92.5%, but above 95% in Wales and Scotland.

A measles outbreak is sweeping Texas

Mennonites are a devout Christian group known for their distinctive traditional clothing and tight-knit community.

Measles is a highly contagious virus, with up to a 90% chance of transmission for those not previously infected or vaccinated.

The standard two doses of MMR provides approximately 97% effectiveness against measles.

Robert F Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s pick as Health Secretary, is known for his vaccine scepticism.

A week ago he appeared on Fox News and suggested cod liver oil and other alternative treatments had been ‘miraculous’ in combatting measles.

 

https://metro.co.uk/2025/03/23/anti-vax-parents-say-measles-wasnt-bad-daughter-dies-outbreak-22775494/

Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Dead Rabbi's Grave! "Huckabee's Wager" - Betting on Both Messiahs

 

Huckabee visits Lubavitcher Rebbe’s grave  ahead of Israel posting 

 

The former Arkansas governor, a staunch supporter of Israel, visited the site in Queens together with his wife, Janet. 

 

 

"The story of Jesus didn't end on a Friday. Sunday came, and the Jesus that came out of the grave when He overcame death itself hasn't forgotten you either. The stone wasn't rolled away to let Him out. It was rolled away to let you see in and know that Friday wasn't the end of the story, and Sunday was just the beginning."

 

Don't miss this powerful reminder!

 

Mike Huckabee breaks down the significance of the Resurrection and offers a reminder of why perspective is everything, particularly in the case of Easter. Don't miss his insightful commentary! #easter2023 #happyeaster #heisrisen #resurrection Watch Huckabee Saturdays 8/7c and again Sundays 9/8c exclusively on TBN SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/c/huckabeeont... View full Huckabee episodes for free on the TBN app: https://watch.tbn.org/huckabee Shop Huckabee merch now: https://shop.huckabee.tv/

 WATCH:

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=503979441367579

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee visited the grave of the late Lubavitcher Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson in New York on Sunday, just days before the confirmation hearings for his appointment as U.S. Ambassador to Israel.

Hucakbee, a staunch supporter of Israel, visited the site in Queens together with his wife, Janet. The Huckabees were escorted by Dr. Joseph Frager and his wife Karen of the New York-based Israel Heritage Foundation, who also hosted the Huckabees for a reception after the visit.

U.S. Senate hearings on Huckabee’s nomination for U.S. envoy to Israel are scheduled to take place on Tuesday on Capitol Hill.

The 69-year-old conservative evangelical pastor, TV host and two-time Republican presidential candidate has visited the Holy Land scores of times and led thousands of participants on solidarity tours over the past half-century since his first trip to Israel right out of high school, just before the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

A long-time champion of Israel’s cause, he has been a staunch supporter of Israel’s rights to the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria, the relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, and has worked to fight the BDS movement.

The grave of the late Lubavitcher Rabbi has become a popular spiritual and political pilgrimage site.

Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump visited the site during the last month of his presidential campaign on the one-year anniversary of the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel.

Argentinian President Javier Milei, who studied with a rabbi who he later appointed as his ambassador to Israel, has also visited the site several times since his election.

https://www.jns.org/huckabee-visits-lubavitcher-rebbes-grave-ahead-of-israel-posting/?

Sickening --- המשיח מקבל ליחידות את הגבירים • כ"ג אדר ה'תשנ"ג

A New Beginning. 1948 - 1957

Jew-hatred is not just a personal prejudice. It is a structural failure of society. This is not just a theory. It is a consistent, verifiable pattern.

 

When the lie becomes the system 

 

Jew-hatred becomes the framework through which entire civilizations justify their failures. It's how societies self-destruct.

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Want some blood with your coffee? 'With our stones, from our blood, revolution until victory' is not just a slogan but a declaration of martyrdom and destruction. Positioned at the doorway of Timeless Coffee on Piedmont Avenue, Oakland, CA, it creates yet another space where the historical scapegoating of Jews is the price of entry

Jew-hatred is not just a personal prejudice. It is a structural failure of society.

A society that believes Jews are the ones controlling the banks will never build a stable economy. A society that believes Jews manipulate the media will never develop free thought. A society that believes Jews are constantly orchestrating wars will never grasp the true dynamics of peace. A society that believes Jews are the ultimate enemy will never escape its own self-destruction.

This is not just a theory. It is a consistent, verifiable pattern.

Nazi Germany funneled its economic anxieties into Jew-hatred; collapsing into financial ruin and total destruction. Stalinist Russia purged its Jewish intellectuals and leaders, leaving a legacy of dysfunction and paranoia. The Arab world expelled its Jewish communities and then descended into disunity and dictatorship. And now in our current age, the American alt-left and alt-right peddle Jew-hatred through selectivity and misinformation, ensuring their movements remain trapped in delusion rather than engaging with reality.

Jew-hatred becomes the framework through which entire civilizations justify their failures. This is how it gains its intensity, its irrationality, and the ability to reshape itself to survive across generations.

Wherever the obsession with Jewish control takes hold, it does not just harm Jews. It cripples entire civilizations, as they rewrite the past, present, and future to accommodate the lie. This is why Arab nationalists teach that Jews never pursued sovereignty over Israel, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It is why disaffected Americans ignore Jewish refugees from Islamic lands, while recasting Palestinian Arabs as extraordinary victims. It is why even the Holocaust, meticulously documented, is now being twisted to describe today’s Jews as, ultimately, aggressors rather than survivors.

What starts as a conspiracy becomes the foundation of a political worldview. The lie becomes the system.

A society that views Jews as economic masters will never take responsibility for its own economic growth. The belief that Jews manipulate global finance allows corrupt leaders to deflect blame for their failures. They purge their most educated citizens, restrict trade, and justify failed policies by blaming imaginary Jewish plots. They view the Jewish state as the source of all suffering — which means they never have to address corruption, dictatorship, or sectarianism in their own societies.

It is not an accident that Arab states expelled over ninety nine percent of their Jewish citizens in the 20th century and then underwent stunning economic and technological decline. It is not an accident that countries that embrace Jew-hatred today — from the Islamic Republic of Iran to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela — are collapsing while those that establish ties with the State of Israel, like the United Arab Republic, are thriving.

Jew-hatred is not just a moral failing. It is poison. A movement that blames Jews for global problems will never create anything.

A society that commits itself to destroying Jews, in whole or in part, inevitably commits itself to its own destruction.

Nazi Germany could have built a European empire. Instead, it devoted much of its war effort to exterminating Jews — even when it came at the cost of military losses. Critical resources were diverted from the war effort to maintain death camps, and pillars of the economy were sacrificed to Jew-hatred, hastening the Axis’ defeat due to technology developed by the very Jews it exiled.

We see the same pattern in the Arab Republic of Egypt, where Jewish properties exist as ghostly reminders of a community that existed just a few decades ago. And we see the Islamic Republic of Iran, once one of the most advanced Islamic nations, squander tens of billions of dollars into the Syrian Arab Republic just to knock on the Jewish state’s borders.

Jew-hatred does not just fail its hosts. It actively destroys them from the inside.

When Nazi Germany fell, it was not just a military loss. It was a total ideological collapse. When the Soviet Union collapsed, it did not just lose the Cold War. It also destroyed the credibility of decades of propaganda. When Arab states began normalizing ties with Israel, it was not just about diplomacy. It was a recognition that the decades-long obsession with Jewish destruction had led nowhere.

The question is: who learns from history, and who repeats it?

Jew-hatred is suicidal. Societies that reject it thrive. Societies that embrace it wither.

For centuries, Jews were expected to silently accept our own oppression, as victims, collaborators, or bystanders. And every few generations, our efforts at self-determination, self-armament, and self-representation nearly flipped the equation. The Zionist movement finally pushed these efforts past the point of no return.

Jewish resilience shatters every prediction of our demise. Jewish sovereignty defies every attempt at our destruction. Jewish survival exposes every failure of those who bet against us.

Suddenly, we are not subjects of history — we are our own narrators, backed by force. We are not a footnote — we are our own story, backed by truth. 

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/when-the-lie-becomes-the-system/

 

We Should All FEAR RFK Jr.'s Agenda - Dr. Paul Offit - In the aftermath of the pandemic, we’ve talked a lot about the loss of public trust in science, but the collapse of trust in government, especially among the young, might be even more worrisome. (The pandemic really did a number on us.) One result is that many more Americans now seem to believe they should be in charge not just of choices about their own health but also of the entire health information ecosystem that informs those choices, as well.

There are currently trials testing the use of mRNA vaccines in cancer treatment, not to mention influenza and AIDS, with especially promising results so far for glioblastoma and pancreatic cancer, two of the deadliest forms. The five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is just above 10 percent; in two recent studies, funded in part by the N.I.H., mRNA vaccines prompted an immunological response in half of participants; among those, none experienced a relapse within 18 months, and three-quarters were still cancer-free three years later.

 

The Entire Future of American Public Health Is at Risk

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The scariest thing about measles is probably not the related deaths, of which there have been two already this winter, the first in the United States in a decade. It may not even be the one-in-10,000 risk of irreversible lifelong paralysis, known as subacute sclerosing panencephalitis. Instead, it’s the much more common effect the virus can have on what’s called immunological memory — creating an immune amnesia that can devastate your ability to fight off future infections.

During the pandemic, when some worried Americans panicked over signs that Covid could damage immune response, they were mocked by minimizers for believing the novel virus was effectively airborne AIDS. The hyperbole applies more appropriately to measles: Before mass vaccination, the rapaciously infectious virus so ravaged the immune systems of children that despite its relatively low direct mortality rate, the virus could have been implicated in as many as half of all childhood deaths from infectious diseases, including pneumonia, sepsis and meningitis.

In the United States of our grandparents and our great-grandparents, 90 percent of children got measles, it’s now believed, killing 6,000 Americans on average each year around the turn of the 20th century and about 500 each year by midcentury, after better diets and antibiotics for complications came into the mix. In undernourished and immunologically naïve populations, the disease can be considerably deadlier, and measles eradication programs believed to be responsible for 60 percent of global improvements in childhood survival from vaccination over the last 50 years. One hundred million lives were saved worldwide by those vaccines, The Lancet calculated last year — two million lives, on average, every year.

That is an awful lot of lives for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the new secretary of health and human services, to dismiss with a wave of his hand, instead choosing to sit down at Steak ’n Shake to celebrate the company’s new beef-tallow fries — recalling that, in his childhood, “everybody got measles,” and implying that immunity from those infections was preferable to the kind you get from a shot.

If that debate sounds familiar, it should, since arguments about natural versus vaccine immunity helped give shape to debate about whether the public-health establishment was overly cautious about Covid, too. As we exit what Siddhartha Mukherjee recently called America’s “privatized pandemic,” the country is feeling its way toward a new anti-establishment equilibrium — and anointing a new class of health leaders distinguished by their vocal skepticism and distrust.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, we’ve talked a lot about the loss of public trust in science, but the collapse of trust in government, especially among the young, might be even more worrisome. (The pandemic really did a number on us.) One result is that many more Americans now seem to believe they should be in charge not just of choices about their own health but also of the entire health information ecosystem that informs those choices, as well. Many regard well-being as something you can mold on your own at the gym or perhaps buy at the supermarket, in the supplement aisle — so long as you did your own research (at least listened to a good podcast) and brought your own list.

What is on that list isn’t necessarily important, as long as it runs against the establishment grain. Mehmet Oz is about to be confirmed as the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, for instance, though only 21 percent of the health recommendations he offered on his television program were judged by a group of researchers to have even “believable” evidence to support them. Kennedy stated that “there is no vaccine that is safe and effective” (he later claimed that the quote was “misused”) and has responded to the Texas measles outbreak not by urging everyone to get vaccinated but by shipping vitamin A. He has also praised steroids and cod liver oil — neither of which are part of routine treatment protocols, and neither of which have produced persuasive research suggesting they should be integrated into those protocols.

The MAHA movement rallies itself under the banner of reform, and it does raise undeniably important questions about why the richest country in the world is so much less healthy than its peers. But what it really heralds is a new age of public-health libertarianism, which is to say, a pretty explicit war on all the things that make health a “public” good, sustained by mutual aid, in the first place. At least, it marks the direction of change: away from solidaristic responsibilities and toward something both more suspicious and more solipsistic, by which individuals draw down biomedical capital accrued over many decades without feeling any real need to replenish the well.

Many MAHA priorities are worthwhile, at least in theory: chronic disease, obesity, diet and exercise and environmental contamination of various forms (ineffective but habit-forming pharmaceuticals, too). But in substituting individual behavior, diet and the your-body-is-a-temple model of human flourishing for germ theory, aerosol spread and what are often called the social determinants of health, the country’s new health leadership team is committing that cardinal American error: seeing individuals as perfectly autonomous and inviolable units, and defining everything outside individual control as either an irrelevant consideration or a violation of bodily autonomy.

In 2019, few Americans outside the anti-vaccine fringe would have told you that the country’s public-health apparatus was an overweening safetyist menace — or objected to the running of that apparatus, which hummed along in the background like white noise. All it took to wipe our memory of that relatively comfortable old status quo was a global pandemic that infected and killed at generational scale. Which does make you wonder how much the backlash even concerns the old systems, however imperfect they might have been, and how much it represents a simple objection to the turmoil of the pandemic itself.

Life is full of risk, as those most outraged about pandemic policies will often remind you, and we plot our way through it by way of choices defined by trade-offs — that is all true.

But the backlash does not merely concern Covid policies. Last week, the nomination of Dave Weldon to be the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was withdrawn, presumably because his anti-vax history made him unacceptable in the midst of a measles outbreak. But the same week the National Institutes of Health froze funding for research into vaccine hesitancy, implying that the agency was no longer worried about falling immunization rates or what could be done to reassure parents about risks. It is reportedly considering dramatically rolling back funding for H.I.V. prevention, and perhaps eliminating an in-house think tank devoted to reducing medical error and elevating standards of care. In just its first weeks under President Trump, the N.I.H. doled out a billion dollars less for research than last year — even though, by some estimates, every dollar spent is estimated to produce five dollars in social gains, and even though nearly all of the more than 350 drugs approved between 2010 and 2019 can trace their development to federal funding. The F.D.A. canceled the routine meeting of an advisory council devoted to formulating the next flu vaccine, in the midst of the worst flu season in more than a decade, with perhaps as many as 120,000 American influenza deaths since October.

As the United States watches the worrying spread of bird flu across the country, we aren’t even vaccinating our poultry, though 166 million commercial birds have died since the outbreak began, spiking egg prices and leaving Americans in front of empty grocery shelves with a foreboding sense of pandemic 2.0. (Kennedy has proposed simply letting H5N1 rip through the country’s bird population unimpeded, an idea floated by the new agriculture secretary as well.) At Johns Hopkins — where, until recently, the soon-to-be head of the F.D.A., Marty Makary, has held an endowed chair at the School of Medicine — $800 million in cuts to the United States Agency for International Development have forced the firing of more than 2,000. Johns Hopkins is not unique. Around the country, scientists are racing to delete the term “mRNA” from their grant proposals, worrying that any hint of a reference to the miraculous Covid vaccines that Trump raced to market the first time around will imperil funding for the countless promising possible future applications of the technology, some of them potentially even more miraculous.

How miraculous? There are currently trials testing the use of mRNA vaccines in cancer treatment, not to mention influenza and AIDS, with especially promising results so far for glioblastoma and pancreatic cancer, two of the deadliest forms. The five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is just above 10 percent; in two recent studies, funded in part by the N.I.H., mRNA vaccines prompted an immunological response in half of participants; among those, none experienced a relapse within 18 months, and three-quarters were still cancer-free three years later.

The truth is, we don’t know whether those results will hold up or scale. That, of course, is what research is for.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/19/opinion/public-health-trump.html

Shas Minister To Hide In A Yeshiva --- State funding meant to go to Shas’s Maayan Hachinuch Hatorani school network was allegedly funneled to HaDerech via various backdoor methods from 2018 to 2019, during Biton’s tenure as head of the network. The newspaper allegedly used this taxpayer money to pay editorial and journalistic salaries.

 

Police grill Shas minister for alleged funneling of taxpayer money to party paper

 

Officers interrogate Haim Biton, arrest four others in connection to alleged transfer of public funds to pay employees’ salaries while minister headed Shas school network

 

Shas minister Haim Biton attends an Education, Culture, and Sports Committee meeting at the Knesset

 

Police summoned Shas minister Haim Biton for questioning Monday on suspicion of using public funds earmarked for educational purposes to finance a private newspaper affiliated with the ultra-Orthodox party.

A police spokesman said that officers in the Lahav 433 fraud investigations unit detained another four suspects as part of a months-long covert investigation, since made public, into the alleged use of budget funds to prop up the children’s supplement of a privately owned party newspaper. The investigation is ongoing.

Police did not name the minister under investigation, but media outlets identified him as Biton, a minister within the Education Ministry who formerly served as the head of Shas’s Ma’ayan Hachinuch Hatorani school network from 2017 to 2021.

Officers investigated the five suspects for alleged fraud, breach of trust, falsification of corporate documents and money laundering.

The police probe began in October 2024, when Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara gave officers the go-ahead to begin investigating Biton and others associated with the HaDerech newspaper, a Shas party mouthpiece, following multiple appeals to the chief prosecutor by the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, an anti-corruption advocacy group.

State funding meant to go to Shas’s Maayan Hachinuch Hatorani school network was allegedly funneled to HaDerech via various backdoor methods from 2018 to 2019, during Biton’s tenure as head of the network. The newspaper allegedly used this taxpayer money to pay editorial and journalistic salaries.

Police said that during their arrest of the four suspects, they also conducted searches and seized documents related to the crimes.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/police-grill-shas-minister-for-alleged-funneling-of-taxpayer-money-to-party-paper/

We'd Rather Shower Than Fight!

Haredi Wedding Song & Rabbis Demonizes Israelis as “Heretics"—But Take Millions Of Dollars From The "Heretic Israeli Government"

The situation is nauseating. It might feel like a fait accompli, but it does not have to be. This can change. But for that to happen, the middle class – those who pay the majority of taxes and serve in the reserves – must take a stand. We must say, “No more.” We cannot continue to shoulder this burden alone. We must refuse to support politicians who sustain this travesty.

Change is possible, but it requires action. Silence will not work. The middle class must mobilize, protest, and demand accountability from elected officials. We must challenge the notion that maintaining power justifies subsidizing those who undermine the state. We must insist that the rules apply to everyone.

 

The IDF needs soldiers but Israel is paying yeshivas to dodge the draft 

 

This might have been possible to tolerate before October 7 but definitely not now, at a time when the IDF is missing over 10,000 soldiers to fulfill the missions it already has.

 

MK MOSHE GAFNI, chairman of the Knesset Finance Committee, leads a committee meeting last week. ‘Why would a country willingly fund institutions that seek its downfall? The sad answer is politics. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs the haredim in his coalition,’ says the writer.

Who needs enemies when we have one another? That was the question I found myself grappling with on Wednesday after seeing a video of what appeared to be more than 1,000 ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students dancing and chanting: “We do not believe in the regime of the heretics, and we will not appear in their IDF draft centers.”

The chant, which rhymes in Hebrew, is chilling. The video, widely available online, captures the fervor of the moment: hundreds of young men jumping up and down as the head of their yeshiva, Shalom Ber Sorotzkin, runs across a platform at the center of the hall – it was his son’s wedding – singing along and urging his students to join him.

On any day, such a display would be deeply disturbing. Here are about 1,000 ultra-Orthodox men, dodging the IDF draft while openly disparaging the very state that allows them to do so, provides them with welfare services, and offers them a quality of life they would struggle to find elsewhere.

But there is more. These men dancing are Sorotzkin’s students at the yeshiva he runs called Ateret Shlomo. Last year, the yeshiva received NIS 18m. from Israeli taxpayers; in 2023, it received NIS 25m., and in 2022, another NIS 18m. Overall, it has received something like NIS 100m. in the last five years.

Yesh Atid MK Elazar Stern recounted on Wednesday how he had attended a meeting of the Knesset Finance Committee the night before. The committee was debating the state budget, which is moving toward a plenum vote later this month.

Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, head of the Ateret Cohanim yeshiva delivers a special torah lesson at the mixed-gender prayer section at the Western Wall in Jerusalem Old City, January 3, 2018, ahead of a Court hearing at the supreme court regarding the Western Wall layout

The committee’s chair, MK Moshe Gafni, was absent since he was at the Sorotzkin wedding. Yet, that did not stop the members from approving scandalous funding proposals for haredi yeshivas and educational institutions, including Ateret Shlomo – the very institution whose students were calling the state a “regime of heretics.”

This is the kind of scenario you can’t make up. Israeli taxpayers are literally funding those working to dismantle the country. Who needs Hezbollah, Hamas, or Iran when we are financing a fifth column from within?

Consider the state budget, which must pass by the end of the month. It includes NIS 1.27 billion designated for yeshivas like Ateret Shlomo. If that isn’t bad enough, an additional NIS 36m. is being allocated – I kid you not – to NGOs that help yeshiva students avoid army service. Again, the state is weakening itself from within.

And this is not an isolated incident. Just last month, Dov Landau, a powerful rabbi within the ultra-Orthodox world and head of the Slobodka Yeshiva, issued a directive to members of United Torah Judaism, the political party for which he serves as a spiritual guide, not to participate in Zionist institutions such as the Jewish Agency for Israel or Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund.

“Zionism is rooted in heresy… and rebellion against divine sovereignty. There is no allowance to participate with them, serve in their institutions, or vote in their elections,” Landau declared.

---

How much has his yeshiva received from the state? More than NIS 50m. since 2015.

NONE OF this makes sense. Why would a country willingly fund institutions that seek its downfall? The sad answer: politics. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs the haredim in his coalition.

He needs their votes to pass the budget, or else the government will collapse, triggering elections he might lose. If the price for their support is over a billion shekels funneled to institutions that openly call the government a “regime of heretics,” then so be it.

The problem is that Israel can no longer afford this arrangement. The economy is slowing, the deficit is growing, and taxes are rising. Yet instead of integrating the least productive sector of society – the haredim – into the workforce and military, we are bankrolling a way of life that is unsustainable.

We need the manpower

Beyond the economic implications, the wedding video raises another urgent issue: manpower. The number of men seen dancing could easily fill two to three IDF battalions, units that are desperately needed. The missions facing the IDF are increasing, yet there is a dire shortage of soldiers.

Reservists who have already served for hundreds of days over the past 18 months are being called up again in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, these young men chant that they will not even show up at the draft center.

The situation is nauseating. It might feel like a fait accompli, but it does not have to be. This can change. But for that to happen, the middle class – those who pay the majority of taxes and serve in the reserves – must take a stand. We must say, “No more.” We cannot continue to shoulder this burden alone. We must refuse to support politicians who sustain this travesty.

Change is possible, but it requires action. Silence will not work. The middle class must mobilize, protest, and demand accountability from elected officials. We must challenge the notion that maintaining power justifies subsidizing those who undermine the state. We must insist that the rules apply to everyone.

There is no justification for a system that allows an entire sector to remain outside the workforce, outside the military, and outside the national effort, all while benefiting from the very state they curse. Israel was built on the idea of shared responsibility. If we want to preserve this country for future generations, we need to restore that principle.

At a time when the country is facing growing security challenges – in the South, the North, and beyond – there is no time to waste. This might have been possible to tolerate before October 7 but definitely not now, at a time when the IDF is missing over 10,000 soldiers to fulfill the missions it already has.

What will happen, for example, if something were to change in Jordan or Egypt and Israel would need to deploy more troops along those borders? Where would they come from?

Israelis must wake up. We must demand that our leaders stop funding those who oppose the state. We must insist that every citizen contribute to the national effort. If we fail to do so, we are not just funding our own destruction – we are accelerating it.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-845980?

Day 527 - Haredi groups help yeshiva students dodge draft

UnOrthodox Jew Interview --- On The 20th Anniversary Year Of This Blog. Are Your Children Any Safer Today Than They Were 20 Years Ago?

The Wisdom of Rabbi Simon Jacobson on Today's Most Sensitive/Urgent Topics!

The ultra-Orthodox extortionists know full well that there is no possible potential alternative coalition that would be more accommodating to their demands, more susceptible to their political blackmail. But as he has done since he established this government — the most out-of-touch and fatally incompetent in our country’s history — when he gave immense power and authority to the far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties, Netanyahu, terrified of losing his majority, continues to act like a supplicant to those who need him more than he needs them.

 

Remembering Eitan Rosenzweig Hy"d: The world class artist who loved learning

His most impressive work, done before he turned 18, graces the Bible Lands Museum. The eclectic selections on his bookshelves show, as his father said, that 'everything interested him,' especially Torah. But he wanted to defend his beloved country...

 

THE ARMY IS NOT FOR REAL JEWS - BUT WE NEED THE GOYIM'S MONEY

 

Right now, however — today! — your first priority needs to be ensuring that Netanyahu is more afraid of you and your president than he is of his coalition partners — the far-right Jewish supremacists and the non-Zionist ultra-Orthodox. That he and they recognize that freeing the hostages will not signify the end of the battle against Hamas and, in fact, will make the battle less complex, since there will no longer be no-go areas where the IDF cannot venture for fear of killing our own. That Hamas will have nowhere to hide. 

 

Steve Witkoff, Israel looks to you

 

To drag us out of this unforgivable limbo, in which Hamas is rearming and no hostages are going free, your first task is ensuring that Netanyahu is more afraid of you and your president than he is of his coalition partners

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) meets with US President Donald Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff in his office in Jerusalem

You have thrown yourself into your role as Middle East envoy with clarity and compassion. The Israeli public, and most especially the families of the 59 hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza, now look to you to ensure they are brought home, and fast, before more of the 24 we believe are still living join the 35 we know are not.

Our people look to you because our prime minister is hesitant, his judgment clouded by his political interests. Most Israelis want him to resign — he presided over the October 7, 2023, catastrophe, but refuses to internalize that the buck stops with him. Most Israelis are adamant that we need a powerful state commission of inquiry to establish the fullest picture of what went so terribly wrong, how our political and military leaders let down their guard and enabled Hamas to carry out its massacre, but he refuses to sanction that kind of probe because he knows its conclusions would be politically terminal for him. Half of Israelis believe that your boss, President Donald Trump, cares more about the hostages than he does. As you know, many released hostages and the families of hostages strongly share that assessment.

Almost two months ago, you helped finalize our deal with Hamas that, in its first phase, ensured the release of 33 hostages — 25 living and eight dead — and that was intended to continue to a second phase, in which the rest of the living hostages would be released in return for another vast quantity of mass-murdering Palestinian terrorists, the full withdrawal of the IDF from Gaza, and a permanent end to the war.

Our prime minister, who signed off on this deal and conveyed it to your predecessors last May, subsequently sought to amend it and chose for months not to push for its implementation, manufacturing pretexts such as the claim that Israel would never be allowed to resume fighting Hamas if it agreed to a full halt, and that Israel’s very existence depends on the IDF’s presence along the Gaza-Egypt border. And then, after you helped make certain that the first, 42-day phase went ahead, he refused to honor the deal’s provision to begin negotiating phase two.

Why the prime ministerial hesitancy? Because Netanyahu fears that, were he to accept phase two’s commitment to ending the war, his coalition would collapse and he would lose power. He’s wrong on both counts. His endlessly threatening far-right coalition partner, Bezalel Smotrich, loudly insisting on a return to the war and no phase two, will not easily bring down the government — he knows his voters would never forgive him. And the opposition will provide a parliamentary safety net for Netanyahu so long as he takes the necessary steps to get all the hostages home.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (left) and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attend a vote in the Knesset plenum

Netanyahu also fears that one or both of the ultra-Orthodox parties will doom his government if he does not pass legislation enshrining their community’s indefensible exemption from military service — an always outrageous inequality that has become corrosive in a nation defending itself on multiple war fronts with insufficient troops and a colossal burden on the reservists. But here, too, he is mistake.

The ultra-Orthodox extortionists know full well that there is no possible potential alternative coalition that would be more accommodating to their demands, more susceptible to their political blackmail. But as he has done since he established this government — the most out-of-touch and fatally incompetent in our country’s history — when he gave immense power and authority to the far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties, Netanyahu, terrified of losing his majority, continues to act like a supplicant to those who need him more than he needs them.

Netanyahu might change his stance on the hostages and the direction of the war at the end of this month, once he has got the 2025 state budget voted into law and avoided the automatic collapse of his government that a failure to do so by March 31 would trigger. But that deadline is almost three weeks away, and, until then, he has plunged Israel and, most specifically, the hostages into an unforgivable limbo.

We know, first hand now, from heroic survivors of captivity such as Eli Sharabi, that every day is potentially the last for hostages who are chained, starved, tortured and abused in the Hamas tunnels. And yet, every day for almost two weeks and counting, Hamas is enjoying the benefits of the ongoing ceasefire — reorganizing, recruiting and rearming, with the sole, relentless goal of killing more of us — while under no obligation to release any hostages. As my colleague Biranit Goren noted two days ago, Netanyahu has publicly insisted throughout the war that intensive, sustained military pressure is vital to both destroy Hamas and enable the release of the hostages. Yet he has chosen to abort both of those processes — to lift the military pressure and delay the freeing of the hostages.

Your colleague Adam Boehler demonstrated in his lamentable series of television interviews on Sunday that he understands less than almost anybody what Hamas stands for and aims for — his declared strategy was “to identify with the human elements of those people and then build from there”?!? — and was radically unsuited for the high-stakes, ultra-sensitive direct talks with Hamas with which he was tasked. It’s not much of a compliment to say you most certainly know better.

Gazans, including young children, and Hamas gunmen gather shortly before the release of three Israeli hostages in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip on February 22, 2025

And therefore, an Israel surrounded by depraved, cynical, cunning, dead-serious genocidal enemies, and simultaneously ill-led by self-interested politicians who are again, with every lesson unlearned, gearing up to tear the country apart with a resumption of ultra-contentious legislation that aims to defang our judiciary — well, our Israel looks to you, Mr. Witkoff.

Do in Qatar today what you have already proved once that you can do — finalize the terms of a deal, the best deal you can, to get the hostages out of hell. Hamas claims to be committed to the framework that was agreed to in your presence in January, but you know that it will breach the ceasefire, and thus give Israel every legitimacy to resume the effort to destroy its military capabilities once the hostages are returned. Come the day, you can also coordinate a regional process to prevent genocidal terrorists again ruling Gaza — though exporting Gazans en masse to Egypt and Jordan, as you probably realize, is not the best idea.

Right now, however — today! — your first priority needs to be ensuring that Netanyahu is more afraid of you and your president than he is of his coalition partners — the far-right Jewish supremacists and the non-Zionist ultra-Orthodox. That he and they recognize that freeing the hostages will not signify the end of the battle against Hamas and, in fact, will make the battle less complex, since there will no longer be no-go areas where the IDF cannot venture for fear of killing our own. That Hamas will have nowhere to hide. That the Israeli leadership that failed to protect its citizenry on October 7 will at least have saved all the lives that were left to save, brought home the dead for burial, and enabled the start of our national healing.

And that the White House, as Trump made explicit a week ago after hosting eight released hostages in the Oval Office and hearing their horror stories from captivity, will keep “sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job.”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/steve-witkoff-israel-looks-to-you/?

 

Outrage as students at state-funded Haredi yeshiva sing anti-Zionist, anti-enlistment anthem

 

‘We don’t believe in the government of infidels and we won’t show up at their [army] recruitment offices,’ sing thousands of Ateret Shlomo young men at mass wedding

 

Unlike members of Neturei Karta, who reject any financial support from the Israeli state, Ateret Shlomo, a large non-Hasidic chain of yeshivas, schools and kindergartens, received a total of over NIS 51 million ($14 million) annually in government funds as of 2023.   

MORE:

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/outrage-as-students-at-state-funded-haredi-yeshiva-sing-anti-zionist-anti-enlistment-anthem/?