“Simply being in the same room with someone who has measles is sufficient to become infected”

Journal American Medical Association

I'm a rabbi, actually not just a plain rabbi but a gadol. I'm infallible and know everything.  "Vaccinations are a hoax, even the polio vaccine was a hoax". Don't call a doctor if you or your children need medical attention - call a rabbi for a blessing...and ask him permission to take your child to a doctor...Rabbis know everything, even if they can barely read. 

"R.B. reached out to Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetzky, founder and dean of the Talmudical Academy of Philadelphia, whose wife, Temi, speaks out against vaccinating children. The rabbi wrote a letter on R.B.’s behalf, leading to her son’s principal relenting and apologizing.When reached by phone, both Kamenetzkys  confirmed their belief that vaccinations, not the diseases they prevent, are harmful.“There is a doctor in Chicago who doesn’t  vaccinate any of his patients and they have no problem at all,” said the rabbi. “I see vaccinations as the problem. It’s a hoax. Even the Salk vaccine [against polio] is a hoax. It is just big business.”

 READ: http://jewishtimes.com/27549/a-healthy-dose/2/#.VBMZXkvM5vZ

HUNTINGTON BEACH (CBSLA.com) — Dozens of unvaccinated students have been banned from an Orange County high school after being exposed to measles by an infected classmate.

The 24 students cannot return to Huntington Beach High School until Jan. 29, according to district officials.

“There’s been some kids absent from my class,” Jordian McCutch said.

The infected student was on campus from Jan. 6 to Jan. 8.

The move is part of an effort to slow the measles outbreak that began at Disneyland in December.

Orange County has 16 confirmed cases of the viral infection, six of which are not connected to the Disneyland outbreak.

“It doesn’t worry me that much because I’ve had the vaccination,” a female student said.

Measles is highly contagious and can spread easilythrough the air.

“Simply being in the same room with someone who has measles is sufficient to become infected,” the Orange County Health Care Agency said in a letter to parents in the district.

California state laws require children to be vaccinated with the MMR vaccine before enrolling in school. Some parents believe the shots are linked to autism and other medical conditions and have signed medical-exemption forms.

For vaccination information, click here.

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/video?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=11051831

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/01/20/24-unvaccinated-students-banned-from-oc-high-school-after-campus-measles-exposure/

Why 10,000 French Jews Will Move to Israel This Year!

CLICK ON VIDEO: http://www.wsj.com/video/why-10000-french-jews-will-move-to-israel-this-year/208E1289-24FF-4E3B-ADFF-DC89F4A1A367.html

ALL EUROPEAN LIFE DIED IN AUSCHWITZ!

CLICK: http://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2011/01/all-european-life-died-in-auschwitz.html

This One's For You Sam!

ONE DEAD CHILD. TWO FOOLISH PARENTS.

He died, needlessly, because his mother and aunt did not believe in immunizations. He was one of 7 cases of measles in the family, 4 of whom were hospitalized. I was so angry at his parents and his aunt. I held them responsible for the child’s death. Their decision to believe false information from vaccine fear-mongers over the advice of their doctor was to blame for his death. Arrogance and ignorance ended his life.

The year was 1990, the peak of the last epidemic of measles in the United States. It was a year of frustration for doctors as we were forced to deal with a disease that was close to disappearing just a few years earlier. Prior to the development of the measles vaccine, measles was an incredibly contagious scourge. The numbers from the late 1950’s are staggering. It is estimated that there were nearly 4 million cases a year, only a fraction of which were reported to health officials. The yearly averages were frightening, 150,000 pneumonia like complications, 48,000 hospitalizations, 4000 devastating brain infections and 450 deaths. Measles was a disease as unavoidable as it was harmful. Over 90% of the population was believed to be exposed in their lifetimes.

In 1988 the story was different. Cases were rare with the majority of cases occurring in non-immunized immigrants. Measles cases were estimated to be fewer than 10,000 a year. There was talk that we might accomplish with measles what had been miraculously accomplished with smallpox, complete eradication of the disease. Then something happened. From 1989-1991 measles made a comeback. The boy I saw die was one of 55,000 cases and 123 deaths during that time.

What happened was that some parents decided not to immunize their children. As it is extremely contagious, measles does not need much of an opportunity to regain a foothold. That opportunity was provided by a false belief in some parents that immunization was unnecessary or even harmful. Parents who were too young to have experienced the disease became more fearful of the vaccine than the disease and their unvaccinated children became innocent victims.

In response to the epidemic in 1989-1991 the medical community mounted a counteroffensive. Doctors aggressively educated their patients about the safety of vaccines and the dangers of the disease. Measles faded from the scene, returning to its status as a rare disease seen mostly in textbooks and rarely in medical practices. Measles remained rare and hidden for 20 years, with only about 60 children becoming infected annually in the United States.

It’s back.

This generation has seen a large cohort of parents, skeptical of the medical profession and supremely confident in their own knowledge and judgment, repeat the mistakes of the past and refuse to immunize their children. Immunization rates are dropping. 

 The incidence of the disease increased 1000% from 2013 to 2014.

The recent outbreak traced to Disneyland illustrates the seriousness of the disease. At least 12 cases were traced back to visits to the theme park in mid December. 11 of the cases were in non-immunized individuals. Two of the children were too young to be immunized, the rest were unprotected due to a foolish parental decision. It is deeply troubling to consider how babies were put at risk by another person’s decision.

It is this Disneyland story that took me back the 25 years to the day I saw that child die. The feelings of anger and helplessness came rushing back. These feelings are intensified when I think of the increasing number of parents who are refusing to vaccinate their children. As someone who took an oath to help people I cannot comprehend the arrogance and foolishness that leads to these decisions.

As a doctor I have spent hours upon hours trying to convince such parents of the importance of protecting their children. The years have proven that such efforts by me are futile. As these are emotional and irrational decisions, rational arguments have no effect. I have reached a place where I don’t argue anymore.

I tell parents that vaccines have been proven safe and that if they refuse to vaccinate their children that I will not provide care for their family. I will not stand by while they risk the health of their child and I do not want my other patients placed at risk. There is no negotiation. Their position need not be heard, tolerated or respected.

It is time that society take a similarly firm stance. There is no duty to respect a foolish position.

-          Bart

If you found this post valuable, please consider sharing it with others. Readers typically learn of the blog from their friends. You can also receive future posts via email by clicking the subscribe button, including the upcoming post "Vaccines and Truth, the Lives of our Children are at Stake"

Update- The Disneyland Data is evolving in the post reflects the data that was available at the time of writing. The post has been edited to clarify the reasons for her parents not immunizing children in the late 1980s. Due to the overwhelming response comments have been disabled for this blog post as they can not be monitored.

References-

http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/189/Supplement_1/S1.long

http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/graph-us-measles-cases

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-antivaccination-update-the-measles-crisis-strikes-disneyland-20150108-column.html

 http://www.bartbarrett.com/home/one-dead-child-two-foolish-parents#.VLbQedLF9A1=

“I see vaccinations as the problem,” Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetzky told the Baltimore Jewish Times in a story published in late August. “It’s a hoax. Even the Salk [polio] vaccine is a hoax. It’s just big business.”

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/205615/prominent-orthodox-rabbi-condemns-vaccines-as-a-ho/#ixzz3OpcQZ729

Open Letter to Jimmy Carter...Actually Mr. Carter, for the record...

Dear Mr. Carter,

I’ll get right to the point. As you spew your disgusting commentary and once again show your anti-Semitic ways by saying that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the origins of Islamist violence, let me remind you of what is actually one of the main origins of modern-day Islamist violence. The failed presidency of one James Earl Carter, Jr.

Back when Iran was in the midst of radical change, you did nothing. When Iran kidnapped more than 60 Americans in Tehran in 1979, you were powerless to get these hostages released. Your failures empowered the beginning of Iran’s worldwide Islamic revolution, a revolution based in violence and terror. To be quite frank Mr. Carter, Muslims should hate you for this as well. You set the stage for what has been nothing short of an ongoing catastrophic disaster. While Americans languished as hostages for 14 months, all you offered were reasons and excuses for why you did nothing. You failed the hostages, you failed your country, and you failed the world. Instead of owning up to your failings back then, you have chosen to once again fail everything that is sacred. Most of all the truth. I guess you feel that you would rather align yourself with terrorists today than admit to the world that you emboldened them.

It is rare that I am this disturbed when I write one of my Open Letters, and once again it is my respect for the United States, its government, and the office of the President that tempers my verbal attack on you, but make no mistake. It is not based on any respect I have for you, for I have none. Rumor has it that you are an intelligent man, so I can only assume your words come from cowardice and bigotry. Either way they are words many consider to be disgraceful coming from a former American president. You were an embarrassment to the office then, and you continue to be one today.

Sincerely,

David Groen

Open Letter to Jimmy Carter...Actually Mr. Carter, for the record...

Dear Mr. Carter, I'll get right to the point. As you spew your disgusting commentary and once again show...

HOLLANDSHEROES.COM

“Many people are surprised to hear that we have comedians in Russia, but they are there," he wrote. "They are dead, but they are there.”

PROOF OF GOD FOR DUMMIES

Why People Kill People Over Satire

By Eric Roston 

---

     

Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images

A gathering in New York in memory of the people murdered in the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris this week.

Many thousands of generations ago, the alpha male in a roaming band of pre-humans felt threatened by a beta male. He picked up a heavy stone to warn the beta away from his fresh kill. Then he turned his back to feast on the carcass.

The beta mocked the warning gesture to his companions, earning laughs, and then a fatal stone to the skull. In that moment, we became people. 

The coldblooded slaughter at Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris this week -- now compounded by slain hostages and reports of more hostage-taking -- wasn't as surprising as it was repulsive. We've seen such responses to satire before, and we know the fascist impulse to murder free thought when we see it. 

It wasn't surprising, but of course it should be. And as these attacks increase, they raise a basic but compelling question: 

Why would anybody actually kill anybody over mockery? 

The easy answer is that the killer is violent, self-aggrandizing, depraved. All true, but it skirts the question. The reality goes much deeper. 

There are three basic traits involved here, which transcend nationality and ideology and touch the very core of who we all are. 

They are violence, religion and satire. 

Violence was baked in at the beginning. Similar murderous impulses in humans and chimpanzees suggest that exterminating other bands to protect territory or food supply is an old instinct common to both. 

“What is the chance of such tendencies evolving independently in two closely related mammals?” says Frans de Waal, professor of primate behavior at Emory University, in his 2006 book, "Our Inner Ape." He observes that “the human pattern most similar to that of the apes is known as ‘lethal raiding.’ Raids consist of a group of men launching a surprise attack when they have the upper hand -- hence when there’s little chance that they will suffer themselves.” 

As for religion, the sociobiologists make a compelling case that faith has been central to human survival. Not because one or another faith holds the secrets to the universe, but because religion bound individuals together into tribes and communities against external threats, raising everybody's chance of survival to child-rearing age. It's not for nothing that the "lig" in "religion" is the same as in "ligament." They are ties that bind. 

If reverence is essential to our evolution, how did irreverence come to play such a powerful role in the way we relate to each other? 

We're told we respond to threats in one of two ways: fight or flight. 

There is a third response: the laughter reflex. That's our way of standing down without running away, or of standing up without really fighting. Greece had Aristophanes. Kings had their fools. France has Charlie Hebdo. 

Charlie Hebdo does satire, and satire is weaponized humor. It's an evolutionary tool that people who are neither in power nor armed can use to reduce the stature of the mighty -- or, like radical Islam, the grandiose. It identifies something undignified, corrupt or otherwise low-status about the powerful or sacred, says Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard and the author of several popular science books. 

As soon as that happens, laughter automatically ripples through those in the crowd who agree. Simply by hearing and reflexively understanding the joke, a listener acknowledges that the satirist's target is asking for it. 

And that laughter doesn't mean just that the listeners understand the satire, Pinker says. It means they understand that everyone else understands it. 

So it's an epiphany, instantly transforming the common knowledge that holds communities together, the foundation of social order. In a blink, the emperor has no clothes. 

“That’s why satire is not always such funny business,” Pinker says. 

In fact, good satire is funny because it can be read in two ways, as a joke or as a statement with a darker purpose. That’s what puts a small, vital part of the mind eternally out of the reach of dictators, torturers and zealots. 

The dead of Charlie Hebdo join a tragic pantheon of writers martyred for humor, including, notably, the writers of the Soviet Union. They come to mind now, in connection with this week's mayhem, as Russian President Vladimir Putin tightens his own iron fist over dissent. 

Daniil Kharms, whose absurdist prose became influential once the world was allowed to see it in the 1970s, dropped it and moved on to writing children's books before he was imprisoned and starved to death in the early 1940s. Isaac Babel chronicled life in the military and in Jewish Odessa in his stories, infused with ironies, and was executed by a firing squad at the start of that decade. 

And then there's the comedian Yakov Smirnoff, who emigrated to the U.S. For his Reagan-era stand-up act, Smirnoff crafted an exquisitely funny, haunting joke  about those natural counterparts, tyranny and comedy. 

“Many people are surprised to hear that we have comedians in Russia, but they are there," he wrote. "They are dead, but they are there.”

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2015-01-09/why-the-terrorists-killed-the-satirists-of-charlie-hebdo-in-paris

Unvaccinated Rabbis and Bunnies in Mickey Costumes? It's a Small World After All! "Nineteen people from three states who visited Disney theme parks inCalifornia last month have now fallen ill with measles, health officials said Friday."

Jenny McCarthy

19 Measles Cases Reported With Ties to Disney Theme Parks 

Nineteen people from three states who visited Disney theme parks in California last month have now fallen ill with measles, health officials said Friday.

The patients all visited Disneyland or Disney California Adventure between Dec. 15 and Dec. 20, the California Department of Public Health and the Orange County Health Agency said.

Sixteen of the cases were in California, two in Utah, and one is in Colorado, officials said.

Officials in California said that of the 16 cases in the state they have only verified that two were fully vaccinated against the disease. Some were partially vaccinated and at least two were too young to be vaccinated.

More people may have been exposed when measles patients were treated at two local hospitals and a lab, said Nicole Stanfield, a spokeswoman for the Orange County's health care agency. Stanfield urged anyone with measles symptoms to call their doctor before seeking medical attention to avoid exposing others to the highly contagious illness.

"The medical provider may visit them in the car or may have a special room for them to go where they're not contaminating everyone else in the waiting room," she said.

Nine cases had been reported earlier in the week with 10 more emerging Thursday and Friday in California and Colorado, where the El Paso County Public Health department said a patient was diagnosed with measles at a Colorado Springs hospital after visiting a California theme park.

Of the California cases, eight were in Orange County, two in Riverside County, two in San Diego County with the rest spread around the state.

Disney officials have said they are working with public health authorities to provide any necessary assistance.

Measles is a highly contagious virus that lives in an infected person's nose and throat mucus and spreads through coughing and sneezing, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Symptoms include fever, cough, runny nose and red eyes and a red rash that usually first appears on the face and spreads to the rest of the body.

Health experts say the best prevention against measles is vaccination. While officials declared measles eliminated in the United States in 2000 because of a lack of continuous transmission, the illness is still brought into the country by foreign visitors or unvaccinated Americans.

"When I was 11, I stood at the door of the yellow wallpapered kitchen while my mother made dinner. She looked at me and I said, “Mom, Dad is molesting me.”

AS HE LAY DYING

My life won’t change when the man who sexually abused me is dead

by Robin Maltz

• 
• 
• 
• 

• 
  
• 7

In the beginning.

My childhood perpetrator is dying. He’s in his late 80s and has lived a long life of middle-class ease without being charged for his crimes against me and, very likely, other children — since there are several of us who won’t go near him.

It was an open secret in my family and I even told some neighbors but no one did anything about incest in the 1960s. In school, I drew strange and scary family pictures when I was six and was sent to the school psychologist. I don’t know the outcome. Nothing changed.

Before my mother married my stepfather, my grandfather was my sexual abuser. I told my mother about it when I was four, in the form of a question that made it very clear what was happening.

But my mother was sexually abused by him, too, a family legacy. She married a sexual abuser. I was the prey. They say men who sexually abuse children look for divorced women with children. That’s why it is more common for a stepfather to be a perpetrator than a father.

I met my real father, my biological father, on my 27th birthday. I looked for him after I moved to New York, 3,000 miles away from my perpetrator. I was his spitting image, though his blue eyes were watery with remorse and alcohol and cigarettes — and mine, well, I’d like to say they were cold as steel, but mine were big with fear and guilt. I didn’t like fathers. Any father. We never quite bonded.

It took decades to understand that as a child, calling my stepfather into my room, acting “seductive” and looking at Playboy magazines with him did not make my sexual abuse my fault — they were preemptive strikes, trying to manage what was inevitable. My connection to him was not identification, not compassion, not friendship, not conciliation — it was survival. When I understood this, I understood that I was not guilty.

When I was 11, I stood at the door of the yellow wallpapered kitchen while my mother made dinner. She looked at me and I said, “Mom, Dad is molesting me.” She sent me to my room and later gave me dinner in there. The next day I went to school and so on. I found the word in my elementary school library, but in what, where, I don’t know. Where would child sexual abuse be explained in 1967?

It disgusts me to say his name. I’ll say it once here: Vic, as in “victim” and “victor.” When I briefly tried out the incest movement of the '80s — group therapy, "Courage to Heal" talks — I got angry if anyone called me a “victim.”

• 

  When Darkness Falls

  The night I got into the wrong car and thought I was going to die
• 

  Dawn of a New Age

  I had always despised the spirituality my daughter was into until I opened my heart and mind to understanding her world

At 15, I left their house, hitchhiked over the hill to Hollywood, became a groupie, then a prostitute, relied on lots of drugs and alcohol to get by, was raped repeatedly, had two abortions. At 16, I hitched to their house; it was dawn and I hadn’t slept in days. I was dirty and brushing my teeth with my finger. I went in my old room and fell asleep, my childhood doll by my side. At night, he woke me and told me to get in the Cadillac. I never drove with him. I dug in my heels before getting in a car with him. I was too exhausted to protest. He drove me to a psych hospital that accepted his insurance. I was committed for three months, and then I got out on a family visit and left for good.

My daughter was three months old when I took her out to California for a visit. He came into the bathroom as I put on makeup, the bathroom where, when I was a child, he had the key and entered when he wanted. As my shaking hand put on lipstick, he blocked the door and said, “I have daydreams of you visiting me on my death bed.”

That was the beginning of my haunting. I was plagued by visceral memories of what he did to me. With every shred of maternal instinct that I had been making up as I went along, I had to protect my child. I was 30 then, married to a wonderful man who knew nothing of my past until then. His response, and his parents’ response, made me brave.

I called my mother and told her he could no longer be part of my life. She said, “Get over the past.” I said, “If he tries to contact me or my family, you could never see your grandchild.” So often, women battle while the perpetrator goes free.

It’s 26 years later. My mother remained married to him; he never saw my children, never got a reply from his feeble attempts to seduce me from afar. My mother hates me because both her husband and her father cheated on her with me, because I didn’t play along through life like she did, because I made her have to control a man. He’s dying in her home now.

I’m twice divorced and have two children. They are incredible people. I did not give them the stable life I dreamed of, but very much love.

I’ve missed the life events that make a family because he was there. In most cases, I didn’t even know they happened until much later: the funerals of my grandmother and beloved aunt, the weddings of my cousins and my half-sister; the children of all of them, bar mitzvahs, illness, tragedy and joy. I can never have that back.

My friends and few family members are gleeful that he’s dying but I don’t feel anything. My life won’t change when he’s dead. Maybe my mother will reach out to me after a lifetime of privileging his well-being over mine.

There is no linearity here. Incest is not a story with a beginning, middle and end. It is the story of your life. Maybe you go to college, get married, have children, buy a house — the things in life that feel foundational, but underneath is the story, the backdrop, the sad story that was the beginning.

http://www.purpleclover.com/relationships/2155-story-my-life/

LOL!

Noted Askan Shlomo Yehuda Rechnitz Came to Israel to Strengthen Chareidi Political Parties

SRULI BELSKY CRACKING UP (AGAIN!)

The Charedi media in Eretz Yisrael has been reporting that philanthropist Shlomo Yehuda Rechnitz arrived earlier this week with a small entourage of close associates to negotiate Achdus in the Charedi political camp. (LOL)

YWN – ISRAEL has been monitoring the visit and the events that let up to it, and is now able to share the facts with the Tzibbur at large.

Realizing this, and out of great concern, the Novominsker Rebbe SHLITA, Yoshev Rosh of Agudas Yisroel of America, as well as various other Gedolim (LOL) asked Shlomo Yehuda Rechnitz to go to Eretz Yisrael to intercede and convince Aryeh Deri to return to Shas to restrengthen them. (LOL)

As the Oilam Hayeshivos eagerly await the outcome of the future elections, the Chareidim understand the importance of their own parties accumulating the most possible seats in the new upcoming Government. The recent sudden resignation of Aryeh Deri dealt a big blow to the Chareidi Shas party. If Shas’s numbers were to greatly diminish R’L, the ramifications to the Oilam Hatorah would be devastating. This comes on the heels of the outgoing 19th Government and its harsh Gezeiros against Yeshivos and Kollelim throughout Eretz Yisrael.

The Novominsker’s request was followed by a letter and phone call to Shlomo Yehuda from HaGaon HaRav Shmuel Kaminetzsky Shlita, a member of the Moetzas Gedolei Yisrael in the USA and Rosh Yeshiva of Philadelphia. (LOL)

Shlomo Yehuda complied, on the condition that he receive permission from Hagaon Harav Aron Leib Shteinman Shlita, which he received that evening. He was hesitant as to what he could accomplish, since he told the gedolim that even though he supports Sefardi Mosdos in the U.S. and Eretz Yisrael, he has never met with Deri, had no connection to him and was never involved with the $has party.

Undeterred and armed with Berachos from the Roshei Yeshiva (LOL), Rechnitz arranged for close associates Zvi Weinreb, Moshe Mendlowitz, Duvy Blonder and Yisroel Friedman to accompany him on this important Shlichus.

Shlomo Yehuda first headed to Bnei Brak where he met with Maran HaGaon HaRav Aaron Yehuda Leib Shteinman Shlita for two hours, seeking the gadol hador’s advice in tackling a problem (LOL) that Shas Rabbonim seem to have been unsuccessful in solving.

The necessary calls were made (LOL) and Aryeh Deri agreed to come to meet with Mr. Rechnitz in his hotel. This alone was no small feat, as since announcing his resignation as Shas leader, Deri has refused to meet with anyone or $peak to the media. Accompanied by his wife Mrs. Yafeh Deri, they met with Rechnitz and his associates for a short period to get comfortable with each other LOL). Then Mrs. Deri and the Rechnitz team exited the room, and Shlomo Yehuda and Aryeh Deri sat with one another and hammered out the issues for three hours. (LOL)

It should be pointed out that in addition to Rav Shteinman, Rechnitz has met with other gedolim in Eretz Yisrael as he strives to complete his mission and bring back a successful report to the gedolim shlita in the United States.(LOL)

Following that first meeting, Rechnitz and Deri met again on Wednesday (with a shopping bag), 16 Teves, once again for three hours at the home of Aryeh Deri. Sources tell YWN that Rechnitz literally debated and pleaded with Deri to make the correct and nece$$ary moves to $ave the chareidi tzibur in Eretz Yisrael.

As he exited the room, Deri was quoted as saying “Even if nothing else comes of this, I acquired a great friend, (OMG)(LOL) yet someone I wouldn’t want sitting across the aisle” (or on my lap)

We now eagerly await Deri’s response,(LOL) which will undoubtedly have a profound impact on the role played by chareidi political parties in the 20th Knesset.

As a Bochur, Rechnitz 43 years old, learned in Mir Yerushalayim. In 1998, he incorporated TwinMed, LLC in Los Angeles with his twin brother, Yisroel Zev. Until today, they work and contribute Tzedaka together.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)

- See more at: http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/279594/noted-askan-shlomo-yehuda-rechnitz-came-to-israel-to-strengthen-chareidi-political-parties.html#sthash.k0EUA4NI.dpuf