Friday Night Kabbalat Shabbos With Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump - The "Jews" First Dance at 3:25.....
Despite Sabbath, Ivanka Trump and Husband Celebrate Inauguration (NY TIMES NO LESS)
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner at the Liberty Ball on Friday evening.Credit
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
For Ivanka Trump
and her husband, Jared Kushner, celebrating the presidential
inauguration by attending the gatherings on Friday night posed an
obstacle to their Orthodox Jewish observance of the Sabbath.
Ms.
Trump, President Trump’s older daughter, and Mr. Kushner got special
permission to break from strict religious laws that prohibit them from
using technology or mechanized devices, such as cars, during the
Sabbath, which begins on Friday evening.
A
Jewish person who was briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak
publicly about it said on Friday night that they were given an
exemption under the principle in Jewish law of pikuach nefesh, which
suggests preserving the safety of a specific person over any religious
consideration.
In the case of Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump, that would have meant being outside security escorts once the Sabbath had started.
Ms. Trump, who converted to Judaism, said in a Vogue magazine interview that she and her husband were “pretty observant,” keeping kosher and the Sabbath.
Report: Ivanka Trump gets pass to travel on Shabbat for inauguration parties
The special permission was granted to protect the couple's
safety. Life-saving measures, such as the work of surgeons or soldiers,
are permitted on Shabbat.
Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner celebrate Hanukka with their three children.
Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner have received
rabbinic permission to travel by car on Friday evening following the
inauguration of her father, Donald Trump, as the next president of the
United States, according to a Kol Barama radio interview with Mark Zell,
the chair of the Republican party in Israel.
Traditionally,
traveling in a car on Friday evening or Saturday is a violation of the
Jewish Sabbath. Jared Kushner is Jewish, and Ivanka converted to
Judaism. In a November Jerusalem Post piece, Shira Schmid noted that Ivanka "took on observance of Shabbat, holidays and kashrut, and adopted the Hebrew name Yael."
"We
observe the Sabbath. From Friday to Saturday we don’t do anything but
hang out with one another. We don’t make phone calls," Ivanka told Vogue in March 2015.
Ivanka
praised the way that Shabbat provides a "blueprint for family
connectivity," in that it protects time for her to spend with her
family, including her eldest child, Arabella. “It’s an amazing thing
when you’re so connected, to really sign off," said Ivanka. "And for
Arabella to know that she has me, undivided, one day a week? We don’t do
anything except play with each other, hang out with one another, go on
walks together. Pure family!”
According
to Zell, the special permission to travel by car was granted in order
to protect the couple's safety. Life-saving measures, such as the work
of surgeons or soldiers, are permitted on Shabbat under the rule of pikuach nefesh, or protection of life, which overrides other commandments in the Torah.*
Obama refused to grant despite pardoning a terrorist and a whistleblower, and hundreds of other chaleryas!
Previous
outgoing presidents have pardoned a number of people during their last
days in office.
President Obama stoked controversy in his last week in
office by commuting the sentence of Oscar López Rivera, an unrepentant
terrorist who was not pardoned by former President Bill Clinton because
he had refused to renounce violence, and by commuting the sentence of Chelsea Manning, the US soldier who gave tens of thousands of documents to Wikileaks, including classified information.
However, President Obama has still failed to respond to Sholom Rubashkin's request for clemency.
In the last hours of the President's term in office, the family is
extremely hopeful and praying hard for miraculous news. They urge anyone
with a relationship with the President to contact him about this
important case.
Sholom Rubashkin (age 57) headed Agriprocessors, a meat slaughtering plant
in Iowa for many years. About seven years ago federal forces raided the
factory and brought charges of hiring illegal immigrants and minors.
Sholom Rubashkin was acquitted of violating underage labor laws, but found
guilty of financial fraud. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison and
fined $31 million.
According to a November 2016 article in the Wall Street Journal, prosecutors overstepped, interfered with the process of bankruptcy and then solicited false testimony.
In his last major act as president, Barack Obama is cutting short the
sentences of 330 federal inmates convicted of drug crimes. The move
brings Obama's bid to correct what he's called a systematic injustice to
a climactic close.
Did God choose Trump? What it means to believe in divine intervention
US rabbi rewrites prayer - to avoid blessing Trump
Open
Orthodox rabbi and founder of religious 'social justice' movement says
he can't recite prayer for success of president after Trump win.
Members of the clergy lay hands and
pray over Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at the New Spirit
Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, on Sept. 21, 2016. Photo
courtesy of Reuters/Jonathan Ernst
(Editor’s note: Since Donald Trump’s victory in last year’s
election, many Christians became convinced he was chosen by God to be
president even though he hardly fits their mold of a virtuous leader. In
our “Hand of God” series, we take a closer look at the widespread
belief that God intervenes in our nation’s political process. We profile
three people who think that’s the case. And we analyze why they believe
what they do, and look at the potential implications for American
democracy.)
WASHINGTON (RNS) Democracy may be based on the principle of “one
person, one vote,” but some people who supported Donald Trump believe
the Master of the Universe cast the master ballot.
“God raised up, I believe, Donald Trump,” said former U.S.
Rep. Michele Bachmann after he won the GOP nomination. “God showed up,”
the Rev. Franklin Graham said to cheers at a post-election rally. “God
came to me in a dream last night and said that Trump is his chosen
candidate,” said the televangelist Creflo Dollar.
For those who share this view, Trump’s victory was nothing short of
miraculous, especially given that he beat out 16 other in the Republican
primaries — some of them evangelical Christians with long political
resumes.
“For me, that has to be providence. That has to be the hand of God,”
said Paula White, an evangelical pastor Trump has tapped to pray at his
inauguration.
While it is unclear how many people accept this version of events, conservative Christians appear most likely to embrace it.
But taken to its logical conclusion, the belief that God is in
control of earthly events leads to noxious moral positions and bad
public policy, warns William Schweiker, an ordained Methodist minister and professor of theological ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
William
Schweiker is the Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of
Theological Ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School,
a former president of the Society of Christian Ethics and an ordained
minister in the United Methodist Church. Photo courtesy of William
Schweiker
“It means it’s OK with you and it’s God’s will that millions of people starve to death because of our actions,” he says.
“We don’t need to worry about the nations going under water because of climate change.”
For those who see Trump’s inauguration on Friday (Jan. 20) as
disastrous, the idea that God endorsed him is easy to dismiss as wishful
thinking on the part of conservative Christians who came out for the
winner in such overwhelming numbers.
But theologians across faith traditions have taken the question of God’s role in human affairs quite seriously for millennia.
Among those who study religion and politics — even among those who
don’t believe in God or reject the notion that he puts his thumbs on the
electoral scales — the belief remains relevant if only because so many
people hold it.
And while many scholars of divinity deem it theologically
problematic, they still invite study of the issue. It’s an unsettled
question in many minds, and complicated: Not everyone who believes God
intercedes in human affairs believes so in the same way. Not everyone
who believes God put Trump in office likes Trump.
The question of God and the election begs bigger questions — about
the nature of God, and if and how God becomes involved in earthly
affairs. It is also a question of comfort. For some believers a God who
picks the president is a God close at hand.
“At bottom, it is connected to the belief that God cares about our
lives, which is a great thing,” says Wheaton College theologian Vincent Bacote, who nevertheless subjects to close scrutiny any claim that God intercedes in American elections.
The divine ballot
Popular evangelical speaker Ken Ham,
founder of the Creation Museum, blogged about Trump during the
campaign: “I doubt he truly understands what real Christianity is.”
Photo courtesy of Creation Museum
Ken
Ham, president of a creation science apologetics ministry, operates the
Creation Museum and Ark Encounter. Photo courtesy of Creation Museum
Yet Ham does not doubt that God gave Trump the presidency.
“God is in total control,” Ham says. “He makes that very clear in the
Bible where he tells us that he raises up kings and destroys kingdoms.
He even calls a pagan king, Cyrus, his anointed, or his servant to do
the things that he wants him to do.”
It’s an idea that sits well with many evangelicals who voted for
Trump. The bragging and often crass president-elect, like the Persian
King Cyrus in the book of Isaiah, may not behave as a God-fearing man
should. But isn’t that just like God to use a far-from-perfect person to
fulfill God’s grand plan?
Still, belief in God’s sovereignty and the Bible’s flawed prophets
does not make the case for God choosing Trump for many mainline
Protestant and Catholic theologians.
It’s a problem of theodicy – the tension between an all-powerful God
and the fact of evil in the world — says Schweiker, who teaches that
theology subjects religious belief to debate and rational argument.
“If you say God’s in control of everything then you’ve got to say that God is a really God-damned bastard,” he says.
A God in total control is not a problem for Ham in light of any
tragedy, from the Holocaust to a tsunami. “People single out particular
events and say, ‘Where was your God?’” says Ham, who is not disclosing
his choice in the presidential election.
“But we’ve got to stand back and looks at the big picture,” Ham
continues. “That was their turn to die. You’re going to die. The
important thing is to look at yourself and ask, ‘Am I ready to face
death, am I reconciled with my savior so when I die I’ll spend eternity
with him?’”
This perspective riles Schweiker, who did not vote for Trump and asks
of Ham: “He thinks there is no moral difference between natural death
and murder?”
If God chose Trump, did God choose Obama?
On the first day of this year’s spring semester at evangelical
Wheaton College, Bacote asked his students about the role of God in the
recent election. One said his relatives believe God works through
imperfect individuals.
Vincent Bacote, professor of theology at Wheaton College. Photo courtesy of Vincent Bacote
Assuming the student’s relatives had voted for Trump, Bacote asked him: “Did your relatives say that about Barack Obama?”
Bacote himself doesn’t rule out God’s involvement in politics.
But the professor questions how anyone could be so sure about God
favoring any particular candidate, how anyone could be “so dialed into
how providence operates.” He points to the Bible.
“If one is taking Scripture seriously you have to ask, ‘Where do you find the United States in the Bible?’ Well, you don’t.”
And, Bacote continues, if God had a hand in one contest, then did he have a hand in them all?
“Was God involved in gubernatorial races? Mayoral races?”
Ham, by contrast, believes Trump, even before he takes the oath of office, is already working in harmony with God.
Trump has appointed Christians to important positions in the new administration.
And around his Kentucky home this year, Ham says, more people
said “Merry Christmas,” as opposed to the “Happy Holidays” they had
offered in previous years.
Ham’s certitude might draw challenges from theologians like Bacote. But he might get points for consistency.
“If Hillary Clinton would have won,” Ham adds, “we would need to accept that God had put her there for whatever reasons.”
God’s to-do list
Talking about God and the 2016 election, the discussion often turns to parking.
Schweiker, the Methodist theologian, arguing against those who see
God’s hand in even mundane human affairs, offers the example of the
“little old man who prays for parking places and then gets a parking
place and says it’s God’s act for him.”
But in attributing a prime parking spot or cash found on the sidewalk
to God, people tend to point to their own specific experiences without
considering the negative effects on others, Schweiker says.
“That little old man may have kept a very sick person from getting a
parking place and getting to the hospital on time,” he says. “Since
Christians are supposed to love their neighbors, that’s a bit of a
problem.”
Carmen Fowler LaBerge, host of the Christian radio program “The Reconnect.” Photo courtesy of Carmen Fowler LaBerge
Carmen Fowler LaBerge,
who hosts “The Reconnect,” a Christian radio show, also offers the
parking space example — not necessarily to challenge claims that God
intervenes in everyday human affairs, but to show the various ways
Christians can approach the issue.
“The fun part about this conversation,” says LaBerge, “is that it
ranges from ‘what is God’s will for all of known history, and then
there’s like, ‘God’s will that I get a particular parking space.’
”
Many Christians believe God intercedes in mortal lives in grand
terms: his plan that the human story have a particular ending, for
example, as described in the New Testament.
LaBerge, a board member of the National Association of Evangelicals,
says she knows God’s will because she has “read to the end of the book.”
When it comes down to the way a sovereign God works on a smaller
scale, as she and all human beings go about their days, LaBerge sees it
this way: “God made me a free person … in the way I live my life, the
choices I make, the words I use.”
She applies this view to her thinking on God and whoever wins an election.
“If God’s hand is on the scales, what I can tell you is the way it is
happening is through human agency. It’s the way the Holy Spirit is
leading individuals to discern and then to act,” LaBerge says.
She says “if” God’s hand is on the scales. What about Christians who are sure about God choosing Trump?
Even those who share Schweiker’s objections to the idea of God
steering humans to parking may understand this year’s election as a
sharp turn in the course of history, with the stakes high enough to
explain God’s direct intervention.
The Rev. James Bretzke. Photo courtesy of Boston College/Lee Pellegrini
The belief may be tempting, but the Rev. James Bretzke counsels against it. He does not imagine the Holy Spirit could have had anything to do with Trump’s election.
The Jesuit and Boston College professor of moral theology also
invokes the concept of free will and agrees that God has chosen flawed
people to work his will in the past … but not Trump in 2016.
Those God chose in the Bible were flawed because they were unassuming
and unexpected, he says. Gideon was an ordinary shepherd. David was the
last of his brothers. And David was a flawed leader. “But ultimately
what sets him apart is when confronted with his sins he acknowledged
them” and repented.
“I don’t think that’s the Donald J. Trump life story,” Bretzke says.
“I don’t think that’s where I would put the smart biblical money.”
ANOTHER MAJOR MILESTONE - 75 MILLION PLUS UNIQUE VIEWS!
"When religion can no longer be taken for granted, it is still possible
to have faith, but that faith will also be accompanied by a penumbra of
doubt. One may decide to have faith, but every decision is in principle
reversible. Religious certainty becomes a scarce commodity. Religion
touches on the deepest hopes and fears of the human condition. There is a
yearning for such certainty.
Fundamentalism can be described as a
project to renew a past certainty or to embrace a new one. Such a
project may be religious or secular, but its psychology, I think, can be
best explained by the sociology of religion. The basic aim must be to
suppress or contain doubt. If the fundamentalist project is to be
imposed on an entire society, it requires a totalitarian state that will
effectively prevent any cognitive contamination from the outside.
Modern information technology makes this very difficult, as do the
communications requirements of a modern economy. Slightly less difficult
is a tactic of giving up on the larger society and confining the
fundamentalist project to a sectarian or subcultural community. It helps
if the community can be located in a physically isolated space.
Brigham
Young understood this very well as he led the Mormons across an entire
continent until they got to Utah, where he could say, “This is the
place!” If the location is urban, the physical isolation must be
replaced by social and psychological isolation. A perfect comparison is
between the ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn and in
Jerusalem. Both have constructed quasi-Disneyland replications of a
traditional east-European shtetl—rigorously segregated not only
from the wider pluralistic society but from the wider Jewish
community—separate schools, separate media, relations with the outside
world limited as far as possible to economic ones. In both cases the
residents know that they could leave—the police could not stop
them—they would just have to leave behind every vestige of Hasidic garb,
put on a baseball cap, and (as the case may be) take the subway from
Brooklyn to Manhattan, or a bus from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. I find it
particularly instructive that in both cases there is even a linguistic
barrier against the outside—Yiddish used as a vernacular, fending of the
contamination that could come in through English or modern Israeli
Hebrew! It is obviously difficult for an individual raised in this
environment to “jump over the wall.” Difficult, but not impossible."..........
Paris conference just another attempt by Europeans to solve the 'Jewish Question'.
NEVER FORGET - NEVER FORGIVE - NEVER AGAIN - PM (ADD-ON)
Honest, I thought they were kidding when I read that leaders from 70
countries were heading for Paris to once and for all solve “The Jewish
Question.”
The meeting took place on Sunday and yes, it wasn’t put quite
like that; they have it as a Paris Conference to solve the Israeli/Arab
issue – as if they really have Israel’s best interests at heart. This is
baloney. All they care about is some new trick to divide Israel out of
existence. The paperwork has already been done.
First of all, 70 countries? How many bigots can you squeeze into one room? Apparently most of the world.
So that’s the story. They have nothing better to do than zoom in on
six and a half million Jews at home in the Jewish State. That Obama is a
part if this makes is doubly obnoxious.
Trump will have to fix this and pronto.
That these Jews live with nearly two million Arabs in the only democracy in the Middle East – never mind. That the Arab/Israeli conflict is the least important issue facing the world at the moment – forget this too.
It’s about nostalgia. The French and the rest of them can’t get over
the good old days when Jews could be rounded up and TRANSPORTED to
Auschwitz.
The Wannsee Conference comes to mind and if you don’t know what happened there we’ll talk about it some other time.
Except that it was at Wannsee where Hitler’s top lieutenants got
together to discuss how best to TRANSPORT Europe’s entire Jewish
Population.
We know the result. No amount of diplomatic double-speak can hide the fact that this is the same Europe all over again.
Why am I bringing up Wannsee when more to the point, for me
personally at least, I should be bringing up Vel’ d’Hiv. This was a
French indoor bicycle stadium that was used by the French as a way
station, a first stop toward transport to the death camps.
Jews brought there had no food, no water, no air, no pity, no hope.
They had nothing but horror. (Drancy was another and actually the first
transport stop.)
The history books have it as the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup, or The Roundup
of Paris, but my family needs no history book to know what happened.
Over a period of two days and nights, July 16/17, 1942, more than
13,000 Jews were rounded up for transport – among them 4,000 children
and infants.
The Gestapo were delighted. They had asked for only about half that number. The French had never been so efficient.
Our home was Toulouse. This was the Free Zone according to Vichy. Free Zone?
“Not at all,” says Sarah. “The Gestapo were all over the place. They were directing traffic on my way to school – in German.”
Jews were being picked off along the streets. Everybody waited for
the knock on the door. We were next…and all of it happened awfully fast.
One day you’re a proper citizen of France surrounded by hospitable Christian neighbors. Next day you’re a criminal.
Altogether more than 70,000 Jews living in France were handed over to the Gestapo throughout the war.
My sister covers it in her memoir “Sarah and Abraham.” I tell it in my memoir “Escape From Mount Moriah.”
The film “The Sorrow and the Pity” documents France’s shame. Alain Delon tells it well in the movie drama “Mr. Klein.”
So this is a big story and it is nothing new. It is simply happening again. Once again the nations are disturbed.
They are disturbed by the fact that the Jewish people can’t be rounded up for transport. It used to be so simple.
Now the Jews have a home – Israel. This is what irks them and here they come again to fix their “Jewish Problem.”
So I have a personal say in this and I say France’s shame will endure
longer than a meeting on Sunday. This is a shame unforgivable and
everlasting.
Ditto the rest of this heartless world.
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard
writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New from the novelist: “News
Anchor Sweetheart,” a novelist’s version of Fox News and Megyn Kelly.
Engelhard is the author of the international bestseller “Indecent
Proposal.” He is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary
Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
Seen from above, the 2016 electoral map
of New York City is blue with dots of red. Trump’s home district is
blue, but across the water a red wedge slices into Brooklyn. Around that
red wedge are districts where Hillary won 90 percent of the vote and
Trump was lucky to get 5 percent. Inside it, he beat her in district
after district.
The voters who handed him that victory are the
Chassidic Jews of Williamsburg who dress in fur hats and black caftans.
Their districts, crammed in by hipsters and minorities, are a world
away from the progressive activist temples whose clergy went into
mourning at Hillary’s loss.
East of Prospect Park, in a vast
sea of blue, is what looks like a red sofa. Trump won here with the
Chabad Chassidim of Crown Heights. He won in the more mainstream
Orthodox Jewish communities of Flatbush. He won by huge margins among
the Russian Jewish immigrants of Brighton Beach who listen to a man
dubbed the “Russian Rush Limbaugh.”
As the left-wing Forward
put it, “Nearly every election district that Trump won in Brooklyn was
in a Jewish neighborhood.” But it was a certain type of Jewish
neighborhood. The wrong type.
“You can compare them to Rust Belt voters,” a Forward source states. “They are hardworking people, not college educated.”
And then in Far Rockaway where the housing projects by the beach give
way to the red Orthodox Jewish communities that extend into Long
Island.
There’s a line that recurs again and again in the
attacks on David Friedman; the man picked by President-elect Trump to
serve as the ambassador to Israel. It’s not stated openly. It’s implied.
“David Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer from Long Island,” is the sneering summary.
Remnick, the New Yorker’s
left-wing editor, took the sneering to a new level, titling his smear
as “Trump’s Daily Bankruptcy.” Jewish identity, he declares, has never
been a matter of “bankruptcy law.”
To a certain class of
elites, it is self-evidently absurd that a bankruptcy lawyer from Long
Island be appointed to anything or be listened to about anything. David
Remnick is a Washington Post man married to a New York Times woman who went on to inherit the editorship of the New Yorker
and turn it into a left-wing echo chamber. He lives in a $3.25 million
four-bedroom Manhattan apartment with a wood-burning fireplace.
And David Friedman is the Orthodox son of a Rabbi from Woodmere who
still lives there. His father was a Republican who hosted President
Reagan. He might occasionally be allowed to read the New Yorker.
And that’s about it.
Yet it’s hard to think of anything that might recommend Friedman more to Trump.
Over at New York Magazine,
Frank Rich and Fran Leibowitz famously chuckled over Trump being “a
poor person’s idea of a rich person.” David Brooks, the token slightly
right of the left voice at the New York Times, full of contempt
for Trump, in an infamous moment, studied Obama’s “perfectly creased
pant” and came to the conclusion that, “he’ll be a very good president.”
“I divide people into people who talk like us and who don’t talk like us,” Brooks has said.
Obama spoke like one of the collective “us”. Trump and Friedman don’t
talk like “us”. Their voices are distinctly working class. Their New
York values are those of a grittier and grimier country.
Trump’s calling card was, “Make America Great Again”. Obama’s was a
memoir about race and identity that was a hit on college campuses. Two
cultures could hardly be further apart.
The internal war in
America and among Jews over Trump is not just about politics, it’s also
about class. Trump’s victory was the uprising of a cultural underclass.
That is equally true among Jews.
The same divide exists between the slick branding of J Street’s
conferences stocked with self-appointed thought leaders who have never
worked for a living and the hard-working Jewish communities who loathe
the New York Times for its hostility to Israel. These are the
Jews who have never been represented in national politics. Whom most of
the left didn’t even know existed.
Friedman’s appointment led leftists like Remnick to undertake a baffled archeological survey of Arutz Sheva: a popular pro-Israel news site that no one at the New Yorker
had ever heard of. The elites of the left have suddenly had to grapple
with the existence of people who don’t talk like “us” or think like
“us”.
And that for many voters, non-Jewish and Jewish,
encompassed the thrill of Trump. Voting for Trump forced the elites that
had ignored them out to acknowledge their existence for the very first
time.
The split is as real among Jews as it is in the rest of
America. Trump’s victory allowed Jewish communities that had been shut
out of the national dialogue to have a voice. The divide over Israel is
not only about policy, but about culture and class. The divide between
readers of the Jewish Press and the Forward is as real as the yawning gap between country music listeners and the NPR audiences.
Trump and Obama both have inner circles filled with Jews. But they are
as different as David Remnick is from David Friedman, as Jan Schakowsky
is from Boris Epshteyn, or as J Street’s Jeremy Ben Ami is from Jason
Greenblatt, a Trump advisor who performed armed guard duty while
studying in Israel.
Obama is legitimately baffled by
accusations of anti-Semitism. His inner circle of left-wing Jews agree
with him that the Jewish State is the problem and aiding Islamic
terrorists is the solution. His echo chamber elevated marginal left-wing
organizations like J Street or Yeshivat Chovevei Torah into representatives of American Jews. Meanwhile his people, like ADL boss Jonathan Greenblatt, took over already liberal Jewish organizations and turned them into lobbies for his anti-Israel agenda.
Now suddenly the President-elect is surrounded by a very different
breed of Jews. Instead of tenured academics, progressive journalists and
irreligious clergy for whom Jewish values, like American values, mean
appeasement and surrender to terrorists, a very different kind of Trump
Jew is now on the rise.
Trump’s Jews are scrappy businessmen
and tough lawyers. They live in traditional suburban communities instead
of hip urban neighborhoods. They are more likely to be religiously
devout and have large families. And they don’t look or sound like the
“us” of the leftist elites. They don’t have the “perfectly creased
pant”. Instead they look like the suburban dads and granddads that they
are.
They believe that you have to work hard to get ahead.
They know that you have to be tough to succeed. And they’ve learned to
get ahead without caring what the liberal elites think of their manners
and style.
In that they’re a whole lot like Trump. And a whole lot like the stereotypical Israeli.
It’s not just the substance of their message, pro-American, pro-Israel
and pro-work, that horrifies the Remnicks of the left. It’s the
conviction that they’re part of a social underclass that doesn’t belong
on stage. The Remnicks have worked hard to ape the manners and attitudes
of their progressive betters.
There was a time when his ilk dared to be
pro-Israel. But when the liberals went left, they went with them. They
justified their betrayal by blaming Israel for “moving to the right” and
alienating them.
But Trump’s Jews, whether it’s his advisers,
who look like every other professional or small businessman in Long
Island or Teaneck, or the Chassidic and Haredi Jews of Brooklyn who
voted for him, make no apologies for who they are. They pray toward
Jerusalem, not Martha’s Vineyard. They do not cringe inwardly when
Israel takes out a terrorist. They are not politically correct. They are
Biblically correct.
They are not ashamed of their Jewishness. And now their voice is being heard.
In the fall of ’84, President Ronald Reagan showed up at the home of a Long Island Rabbi for a Sabbath meal. David Friedman’s mother
spent three days shopping and prepared stuffed chicken cutlets, apricot
noodle pudding and an apple crumb cake. Reagan toasted her as “a woman
who makes a meal better than a state dinner.” Meanwhile outside,
left-wingers protested hysterically against the visit.
At
Rabbi Friedman’s synagogue, President Reagan declared, “the so-called
anti-Zionists that we hear in the United Nations is just another mask in
some quarters for vicious anti-Semitism. And that's something the
United States will not tolerate wherever it is, no matter how subtle it
may be.”
The United States has tolerated it for far too long from Barack Hussein Obama.
When Rabbi Friedman passed away, Donald J. Trump, a future Republican
president, drove to Long Island through a snowstorm to pay a condolence
call to his son. Trump has chosen the man who sat at the table with
President Reagan, that “bankruptcy lawyer from Long Island” as
ambassador to Israel.
The left is so angry because it senses
that it is losing the culture war within the Jewish community. The
future does not belong to David Remnick. It belongs to David Friedman.*
Footnote: I am a life-long Conservative Republican, and always voted (R), this time I did not vote for Trump (or Clinton), but I am rooting for him and wish him every success as our 45th president. PM
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Dozens of people have been arrested in a gas scam investigation.
Thirty-seven people, including seven National Grid employees, are charged in the alleged scheme.
Prosecutors say a group of National Grid employees, led by a former
employee, are accused of installing gas meters without inspections or
authorization in Brooklyn and Queens. In return, they were allegedly
paid by landlords and property owners who wanted to start renting their
apartments out without waiting for the proper process to be completed,
CBS2’s Ali Bauman reported.
The alleged mastermind, 47-year-old Weldon Findlay, worked for
National Grid until 2010, prosecutors said. Other defendants in the case
include landlords, property managers, and contractors. They face
charges of enterprise corruption, first-degree falsifying business
records, second-degree criminal tampering and second-degree commercial
bribing, prosecutors said.
CBS2’s cameras were rolling exclusively as many of those men turned
themselves in to police in Manhattan in the morning. Many of the men
were accompanied by friends and family at the precinct when they turned
themselves in, Bauman reported.
“We simply will not allow the lucrative real estate market in
Brooklyn to feed criminal activity and potentially endanger lives,”
Acting Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said. “These defendants
showed contempt for rules and regulations specifically put into place to
protect public safety. And they did this with callous disregard on a
regular basis.”
“These defendants ignored safety for personal profit, skirting
critical steps and undermining the gas authorization process, according
to the charges,” said Department of Investigation Commissioner Mark G.
Peters.
National Grid releasing a statement saying it has “zero tolerance for unethical and illegal behavior.”
“The alleged misconduct, although limited to a handful of former
employees, contradicts the dedication and professional values of our
15,000 hardworking men and women who are committed to serving our
customers,” the utility said. “National Grid has fully cooperated with
and has supported the Kings County District Attorney’s Office and the
NYC Department of Investigation throughout their investigation, has
conducted safety inspections, and has taken corrective measures where
needed. National Grid is also conducting a thorough internal
investigation and will be working hand-in-hand with its regulator, the
NYS Public Service Commission, to take the steps necessary to enhance
our existing controls and to implement any additional controls and
recommendations required to prevent a similar situation from recurring
in the future.
Cuomo unveils plan for Child Victims Act that would do away with statute of limitation
Gov. Cuomo shared his own plan for a Child Victims Act designed to help child sex abuse survivors seek legal recourse as adults.
ALBANY — Gov. Cuomo is weighing in for the first time with his own plan
for a Child Victims Act designed to help child sex abuse survivors seek
legal recourse as adults.
Cuomo, as part of a formal written agenda to be given to the
Legislature Tuesday, said he wants to do away entirely with the statute
of limitation that prohibits those who were abused as children from
bringing criminal cases after their 23rd birthday.
Cuomo’s plan would also allow victims to bring civil lawsuits for 50
years after their attacks took place and would open up a one-year
look-back window for survivors who under current law can no longer bring
cases to do so.
In addition, the plan would treat public and private institutions the
same by doing away with a current requirement that gives those abused in
a school or other public entity only 90 days from the attack to notify
of their intent to sue.
"Child victims are one of the most vulnerable populations of this
state,” Cuomo wrote in his message, a portion of which was obtained by
the Daily News. “The outdated laws of New York do not adequately address
the needs of these young victims.”
Kathryn Robb, a sexual abuse survivor and advocate, told The News she expects the governor to get a bill passed this year.
He added that “New York needs to address this injustice in the fight against child sexual abuse.”
Cuomo has told advocates and the News, which made the issue a campaign
in 2016, that the Child Victims Act would be a top priority for him in
2017.
While the issue is part of his overall agenda he plans to release later
Wednesday, the governor never publicly mentioned it during his six
regional State of the State addresses he gave this week.
Kathryn Robb, a sexual abuse survivor and advocate who has regularly
met with Cuomo’s office, told The News earlier this week she expects the
governor to get a bill passed this year.
Senate
Majority Leader John Flanagan said last week it was too early to say
whether the Child Victims Act will reach the floor for a vote this year.
“Just as the governor did the impossible in opening the Second Ave.
subway, we believe that he will clear a path and lead so many victims to
justice,” Robb said. “We trust his promise, we trust his commitment to
justice and fairness, and the safety of children.”
She added that “the governor serves the people first, and he does so
not by the particular words in a speech, but more by the conviction in
his heart and honor in his deeds. The new session is upon us. We trust
he will lead us to justice."
The Child Victims Act has been around for over a decade. And while it
had passed the state Assembly early on, it has never passed the Senate.
Children at risk as Charedi parents say no to vaccinations
Charedi
children in Stamford Hill are at risk of contracting potentially deadly
conditions like measles and the community is in danger of being
affected by an epidemic because too many parents are not getting them
immunised.
Members of the Jewish community in Stamford Hill
The issue also affects the country’s fastest-growing Charedi community in Prestwich, Manchester.
The
World Health Organisation (WHO) has held discussions with communal
leaders from the north-east London suburb, home to Europe’s largest
strictly Orthodox community, because of “persistent outbreaks of vaccine
preventable diseases (VPDs)”. The organisation has decided to intervene
via its Tailoring Immunisation Programme (TIP), which was designed to
identify susceptible populations.
Low uptake levels threaten to
“jeopardise disease elimination”, according to WHO, which is why medical
experts are working with community leaders — many of whom are calling
for action now.
Chief among those is Stamford Hill GP, Dr Joseph
Spitzer, himself an Orthodox Jew. More than 80 per cent of his patients
in Cranwich Road Surgery are Charedi.
Dr. Joseph Spitzer
“Parents who don’t immunise their children are totally irresponsible, for their own children and other people’s,” he said.
For
diseases to be wiped out, communities must have “herd immunity”,
whereby well above 90 per cent of people are immunised. When that is not
reached, as in Stamford Hill, where the percentage is well below 80 per
cent, there is the risk of an epidemic, particularly among the elderly,
young children and pregnant women.
Evidence provided by City and
Hackney Public Health Team revealed that uptake of the 5-in-1 vaccine
(combating diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio and Hib), which
should be delivered in early infancy, was around 30 per cent lower in
concentrated Charedi areas than in the rest of the borough of Hackney.
In Stamford Hill, the uptake in 2015-16 was 64 per cent, compared with
90 to 95 per cent elsewhere in the borough.
Rates for the MMR
vaccination in the same area for the same period were 76 per cent, while
the uptake across Hackney was 85 to 89 per cent. This is significantly
better than previously, but is “slowly and steadily declining”, a
council spokeswoman said.
When Rachel Fein’s daughter was four
months old, she contracted measles at the creche at Yesodey Hatorah
Senior Girls School, where Mrs Fein is deputy head.
“She was too
young to have the MMR so when she was exposed to measles she developed
it with complications,” said Mrs Fein. “Thankfully there were no
long-term effects, but she was admitted to hospital with a high fever,
lethargy, a rash and dehydration.”
Children are no longer accepted in the creche without vaccinations, unless there are specific medical reasons.
Dr Spitzer said that reasons for the drop in vaccination rates are “hard to define”.
“A
lot is based on ignorance and myth. Parents aren’t desperately well
informed because they don’t follow secular media,” he explained.
“Sometimes they say the rebbe told them not to immunise, but when I
speak to the rebbes they vehemently deny it. There’s a certain
laissez-faire attitude due to people no longer knowing what these
diseases are. Immunisation is a victim of its own success.”
Babies should be vaccinated from eight weeks onwards, but that advice often falls on deaf ears. “Occasionally we have outbreaks of measles, rubella and mumps which are entirely preventable,” Dr Spitzer said.
The
Cranwich Road Surgery is among three in the area to employ a Charedi
nurse to boost take-up. Naomi Freeman was previously funded by Hackney
Public Health to do just that across the borough and was highly
successful. However, she was recently made redundant due to budget cuts.
“I
got rates up from 54 to 87 per cent [within the community],” said Mrs
Freeman, who was taken on by Dr Spitzer last month. At that time,
immunisations at Cranwich Road were just 50 per cent.
“Health
visitors would be told that Pesach is coming up and they can’t immunise
for six weeks,” Mrs Freeman added. “The health visitors took that at
face value, but I say ‘put your kugel in the oven and come to me’.”
Excuses
for not seeking vaccinations are numerous, according to Mrs Freeman,
who says the risk is heightened by overcrowding and the high proportion
of pregnant women and young children in the community.
But there
are real pressures which deter parents. She explained: “Most mothers
don’t drive and every week there’s Shabbos to prepare for. They are so
overloaded so often they can’t face having a child that’s going to be
unwell for several days. But the side-effects are so minute in
comparison to getting the actual illnesses.” She continued: “I had
someone who never immunised because family members said it was too
dangerous. Would you ask your cleaner for medical advice? Of course not.
So why go to family when doctors and nurses want the best for your
children?”
She cited a recent example of a child from another
Charedi community who had three limbs amputated after contracting
meningitis. “Maybe the mother forgot her appointment or didn’t want her
child to cry for a few days. Would you want that guilt?”
Rabbis
are vital to reverse the trend, she believes and somebody playing his
part is Rabbi Avrohom Pinter, chairman of the Orthodox Jewish Health
Forum.
He said: “People don’t take immunisation seriously because
they’ve seen those illnesses and think ‘it isn’t that terrible’. They
don’t realise that it could kill somebody else. We have a responsibility
to others as well as to ourselves.”
Rabbi Pinter believes the
inaction is partly due to enduring fears about MMR, sparked by former
doctor Andrew Wakefield who was discredited over claims the vaccine
caused autism. He said: “Some people say ‘it’s in God’s hands and I’m
not going to take that risk’. That view has no basis in Yiddishkeit.”
Rabbi
Pinter is critical of the NHS’s decision to axe Mrs Freeman’s role, but
commends her continuing involvement. “Somebody outside the community
may accept some of the excuses out of political correctness, but she
understands the issues,” he said.
The importance of vaccinations
within the community was emphasised by Professor David Katz, an
immunopathologist who is chairman of the Jewish Medical Association
(UK).
He said: “All communities need to be engaged with
immunisation. The Stamford Hill Jewish community is not unique, but they
may need more encouragement, and a different, sensitive approach from
healthcare workers.
“It is very unfortunate that previous efforts
to support high rates of immunisation in that community seem to have
been disrupted due to changes in service funding and provision. Doctors
have already seen serious complications, requiring hospital admission.
“The good work done in this community in the past must not be dissipated.”
The
issue also affects the Charedi community in Prestwich, Manchester.
According to Dr David Hibbert, a local GP who is strictly Orthodox, it
is a problem he has repeatedly encountered in his 30-year career. “I’m
sat here at my desk with a load of immunisation refusers that I need to
chase up,” he said. “On the whole these people blame anecdotal stories
of this person who had a reaction or that person who fell ill, or they
are just mistrustful of the whole system.
“If the government was
really interested in raising rates they would just insist that no child
could go to school without immunisations, like they do in France.”
Dr
Hibbert acknowledged that some people are simply “overwhelmed” by the
pressures of large families which is why his practice periodically
organises home visits to immunise children.
Two years ago a report
into the health of the Salford Jewish community’s health revealed that
uptake was a problem among Charedim in the area.
The report showed
that just over half of people (58 per cent) were totally happy about
immunising their child, while the remainder were either unhappy about it
or unsure. It concluded that a “new, hard-hitting marketing campaign on
immunisation” was needed.
Dr Marc Herscovitz, a GP working with
the Charedi community in Gateshead, painted a rosier picture. He said:
“Rates of immunisation here are within the expected norms, with local
rabbis supporting vaccinations.”
According to Shlomi Isaacson, of
the Jewish Council of Gateshead, the local Labriut Healthy Living Centre
has worked closely with Charedi families and with GPs’ surgeries to
boost numbers being vaccinated and there are currently few concerns
about take-up.
Low take-up rates are not uncommon within Charedi
communities elsewhere in the world. As a result, there have been reports
of several epidemics of preventable diseases in recent years, including
measles outbreaks in Brooklyn in 2013.
by Avi Shafran - Day Job - Spokesman For The Agudath Israel of America
True or False?
The U.S. abstention to the recent U.N. resolution was the first time
an American administration declined to veto a Security Council
resolution critical of Israel and opposed by her.
The resolution is groundbreaking, and pledges the territory captured by Israel in 1967 to a Palestinian state.
It would remove Yerushalayim and the Kosel Maaravi from Israeli sovereignty.
It is one-sided, placing the blame for the stagnated peace process squarely on Israel.
President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry have sold Israel out.
The first four are demonstrably false. The fifth, too.
Please don’t read further if you are not willing to consider a
perspective different from the one you expect from this rightly
respected newspaper and other “pro-Israel” news sources and
organizations, including the wonderful one that employs me, Agudath
Israel of America, which, like many other Jewish groups, condemned the
U.S. abstention. I am resolutely pro-Israel but not necessarily in
agreement with every Israeli administration’s positions. And, as I have
pointed out on several occasions, while I proudly represent Agudath
Israel, and convey its stances to the public and media, I exist as an
individual too, and I write in these pages and in others from my own
personal perspective.
Still here? Good.
Since the Six-Day War in 1967, there have been 42 U.S. vetoes of
Israel-critical resolutions – but, over the course of eight U.S.
administrations, including the Reagan and George W. Bush years, more
than 70 “yes” votes or abstentions. The recent Security Council
abstention was noteworthy, though: it was the Obama administration’s
first non-veto of a critical-of-Israel resolution in its eight years,
the lowest count of any president since 1967.
The recent resolution has no practical effect and takes no position
that has not already been taken by the Security Council (and most of the
world’s governments). It does not determine borders; it only
reiterates the tired truism that Yehudah and Shomron are “occupied”
territory. Technically, that is not entirely accurate, since the land
was not under any state’s legitimate sovereignty before its capture, but
it is true that, of all the captured territory, only Yerushalayim was
annexed by Israel.
And Yerushalayim’s status, although not recognized at present by the
U.N., will not change in negotiations, should the peace process ever
resume. As Secretary of State Kerry said in his detailed post-vote
speech, there must be “freedom of access to the holy sites consistent with the established status quo.” He reiterated that point, too, a moment later, declaring that “the established status quo” at religious sites must be “maintained.”
U.N. resolutions concerning Israel have long been consistently,
notoriously and laughably one-sided. This one, though, as it happens,
while calling on Israel to stop building in settlements, calls too on
Palestinians to take “immediate steps to prevent all acts of violence
against civilians, including acts of terror” and to “to clearly condemn
all acts of terrorism.” That, at least for the U.N., is in fact
groundbreaking.
As to Messrs. Obama and Kerry, consider a thought experiment.
Imagine – just as a theoretical possibility – that they both actually
care deeply about Israel. In fact, over his nearly 30 years in the U.S.
Senate, Mr. Kerry was a reliable, stalwart and unapologetic defender of
Israel. Pretend that Mr. Obama is of similar mindset. (Which he is,
but if you’re convinced otherwise, just pretend.) And that they both
believe, honestly and deeply, that (whatever you or I may hold to be
true) only a two-state solution can ensure Israel’s security and
integrity, and that continued settlement-building gives the Palestinians
an excuse (unjustified, but still) to not engage in peace negotiations.
What would the two men then rightly do, with only days left for their
administration, if a resolution reiterating the world’s objection to
that building activity and calling for negotiations were put on the
Security Council table? Veto it, against their convictions about
Israel’s wellbeing? Or try to send a message, as they prepare to leave
the world stage, about what they feel is best for Israel?
They might be entirely wrong about that (although they might be
right). And, yes, the overwhelming blame for the lack of peace is
unarguably on the Palestinian leadership and populace. And yes, all of
Eretz Yisrael is bequeathed to the Jewish People.
Still and all, the American leaders’ determination to issue a final,
passive call for what they believe is in Israel’s best interest does not
bespeak disdain for Israel, but precisely the opposite.
Which is why all the shouts of “betrayal!” and “traitors!” and
“complicit!” are so very wrong and so very sad. This is an
administration that has stood by Israel time and time again for eight
years, and that mere months ago forged a 10-year, $38 billion military
aid package for Israel, the largest for any U.S. ally ever.
One can consider Mr. Obama and Mr. Kerry (and most Israelis, as it
happens, because a clear majority are in favor of a negotiated two-state
resolution) misguided, if one must. But one cannot slander them as
Israel-betrayers. Must everyone be either “with us” or “against us,”
“friend” or “enemy”? Can no one be with us and a friend but with a
different perspective than our own?
What the outgoing U.S. administration wants from Israel isn’t
capitulation to her enemies. What it has always sought is a sign of
willingness on the current Israeli government’s part to simply act
decisively on its declared commitment to a peace process aimed at a
two-state solution.
To be sure, even a restarted peace process is far
from assured of success; there are many issues that could prove
intractable. And yes, there have been moratoriums on “disputed
territories” building in the past, to no avail. But an acceptance of
yet another one, instead of a continuation of the recently accelerated
pace of building, will put the ball again in the Palestinian court, and
offer something to an angry world.
Yes, that world is unreasonable, obnoxious and ugly. Not to mention
ridiculously hyper-focused on Israel, when so many truly unspeakable
true human tragedies exist elsewhere, ignored.
So why, so many ask, should its opinion matter to us? That sentiment
is what Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu expressed when he
said, in the wake of the Security Council vote, that “Israelis do not
need to be lectured of the importance of peace by foreign leaders” and
that “Israel is a country with national pride, and we don’t turn the
other cheek” and that he has had “enough of this exile mentality.”
And it is what he expressed, too, by summoning ambassadors of
countries who voted for the resolution, and the American ambassador as
well, to reprimand them, on the day that Christians consider the holiest
on their calendar. “What would they have said in Jerusalem,” an
unnamed Western diplomat later fumed, “if we summoned the Israeli
ambassador on Yom Kippur?” Think hard about that.
It may feel gratifying to snub one’s nose at real or perceived enemies. Personally, though, I am a talmid, so to speak, of Rav Elchonon Wasserman and Rav Reuvein Grozovsky, zecher tzaddikim liv’racha, not of Reb Bibi Netanyahu. I believe that we are indeed in exile, in galus;
that “secular Jewish nationalism” is wrong and dangerous; and that a
modicum of modesty is demanded of all Jews, especially those who claim
to represent other Jews. I believe that humility, not arrogance (and
certainly not “kochi v’otzem yadi”) should be the operative principle of Klal Yisrael, and of anyone who deigns to lead a “Jewish state.”
Maybe, with the help of the Trump administration, Israel will be able
to cow the 2.8 million Palestinians in “the territories” into
submission. And maybe Hamas will not be able to seize whatever
peace-seeking Palestinian hearts and minds are left. Maybe all will be
well, Israelis will sleep safely and the fears of the Obama
administration will prove to have been without warrant.
Maybe.
But whatever may happen in the future, what the present requires of us, al pi mesoraseinu, I believe, is hatznea leches and hakaras hatov, not snubbing, sneering or insults.
