Jewish law has plenty to say about lying — and it certainly does not recommend doing nothing.

"The problem of an unchecked lie matters for all Americans, but it especially matters for the Jewish community — because the big lie of Jewish power, and the antisemitism that often follows it, thrives in an environment where flagrant lies are acceptable."

Trump’s lies are more dangerous than ever — does Jewish law have a solution?

 

After the first presidential debate, it’s clear that Americans must take the threat of a public culture defined by lies seriously

Thursday’s debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump made one thing clear: American citizens must figure out how to define and react to a lie, with a particular emphasis on reaction. 

Two of America’s most seasoned journalists, Dana Bash and Jake Tapper — both of whom happen to be Jewish — failed to respond to egregious lies during the debate, highlighting that lies are our greatest social and political challenge, and that non-response to them has wrongly become a norm. 

Jewish law has plenty to say about lying — and it certainly does not recommend doing nothing.

One of the things it points out: Facing a skilled liar head-on can be tough. And when it comes to facing someone like Trump, whose lies have recently earned him a conviction on 34 felony counts, it’s debatable whether he should have the opportunity to show off that skill set.

“Halakhah (Jewish law) treats ordinary lying as a vice, and lying in court as a crime for both witnesses and judges,” said Rabbi Aryeh Klapper, Dean of the Center for Modern Torah Leadership. “Criminally convicted liars lose core privileges of citizenship such as the right to testify. They may also be prevented from taking oaths, which can put them at a disadvantage in business.”

Yet if anything, Trump’s lies seemed to give him an edge on his opponent; left unconstrained, he was free to perform. 

“I’m not sure I’d ever watched Donald Trump lie so incessantly, extravagantly and unabashedly, and that’s saying something,” Frank Bruni wrote in The New York Times. “On Thursday night he lied about the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He lied about the violence in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. He lied about his relationship with the military, about his concern for the environment — about pretty much any and every subject that came up. He lied with a smile. He lied with a shrug. He lied with a sneer.” 

When Trump twisted the truth until it sounded like Democrats support killing babies on arrival, the feminist writer Jessica Valenti wrote on X, “I’m sorry, but Trump just claimed that Democrats allow “after birth” abortion and the moderators’ only response was “thank you”???”

The problem of an unchecked lie matters for all Americans, but it especially matters for the Jewish community — because the big lie of Jewish power, and the antisemitism that often follows it, thrives in an environment where flagrant lies are acceptable.

So what does Judaism have to say about lying? Plenty.

Trump’s lies and Jewish law

I was interested in hearing more about “core privileges of citizenship” that a criminally convicted liar might lose.

“Being judges,” Rabbi Klapper said. “The ability to take an oath was an essential part of participating in public life, because otherwise you couldn’t defend yourself or your property in many situations.”

At what point do we as citizens believe that lying precludes a person from “participating in public life” — like, perhaps, being featured in televised debates? Or being eligible to run for president?

Jewish law also outlines potential physical punishment for lying in court; “Perjured witnesses can also be given lashes, like most halakhic criminals,” Klapper said. But Rabbi Klapper cautioned that such punishment was extremely rare. And of course, this was ancient law — not modern practice.

There is also the famous and, as Rabbi Klapper put it, “weird” case of eidim zomemim, or witnesses who lie. 

“Eidim zomemim are dealt the very same punishment they intended to generate with their false testimony,” writes Rav Moshe Taragin of Torat Har Etzion, summarizing the views of Masekhet Makkot. “For example, if eidim zomemim conspired to obligate capital punishment, they themselves are executed; if they intended to cause financial loss, they must reimburse their intended victim.” 

It’s one of the most unforgettable parts of Jewish law, which shocked me when I first encountered it as a child: If you go to court and undertake a conspiracy to wrongly bring the death penalty upon your innocent neighbor, you might pay with your life for trying to take away his. This extraordinary expression of the high value Judaism places on the truth also shows that Jewish law believes that a liar who meaningfully harms others in a court of law should be penalized.

Thinking about eidim zomemim reminded me of Trump’s involvement in the infamous case of the Central Park Five. After five Black teenagers were arrested on rape charges — which turned out to be false — Trump took out full-page newspaper ads urging that they receive the death penalty.

Even when it was clearly established that the teenagers, who served 6 to 13 years in prison, had been falsely accused, and even when a serial rapist was linked to the crime through DNA evidence and confessed, Trump faced no consequences. And he continued to bear down, and continued to suggest the Central Park Five deserved harsh punishment. “You have people on both sides of that. They admitted their guilt. If you look at Linda Fairstein and if you look at some of the prosecutors, they think that the city should never have settled that case. So we’ll leave it at that,” Trump said in 2019.

Jewish principles regarding eidim zomemim acknowledge that a lie can be damaging and even lethal to others. The idea is worth considering: Certain kinds of lies are a clear and plain danger to life itself.

That was clearly the case in Trump’s involvement in the case of the Central Park Five; it remains so today, as he amply demonstrated in the debate. Consider his lie, highlighted by Valenti, that Democrats support the “abortion” of babies after they are born; such distortions are a direct threat to the lives of people whose pregnancies threaten their health, as maternal mortality is already on the rise amid a national crackdown on abortion rights. 

Returning to the Torah

It’s worth taking another look at the verses in the Torah that address lying. “Leviticus 19:11 forbids lying and Exodus 23 commands us to go even further and distance ourselves from lies,” said Klapper.

There is a danger to having our public lives so structured by lies and liars — and particularly to having such a pernicious one in our living rooms, on national television, and in the Oval Office. 

In 2016, Trump’s outrageousness was rewarded with the presidency. Over the past four years, many of us have let fade the memory of the profound rot in our culture that followed his first term in office; the sense of rot we felt in our own souls. This time, we cannot treat his lies with the same cavalier attitude. We owe it to the U.S. — and the world — to react.

https://forward.com/opinion/628743/trumps-lies-debate-biden/?

I'll Venture To Guess - The Blind, Short-Sighted Jews At The Agudath Israel Think This Is Great!

 

Oklahoma’s State Superintendent Requires Public Schools to Teach the Bible

 

The state superintendent, Ryan Walters, said the Bible was a “necessary historical document” that must be taught in certain grades.

 

Oklahoma’s state superintendent on Thursday directed all public schools to teach the Bible, including the Ten Commandments, in the latest conservative push testing the boundaries between religious instruction and public education.

The superintendent, Ryan Walters, who is a Republican, described the Bible as an “indispensable historical and cultural touchstone” and said it must be taught in certain grade levels.

The move comes a week after Louisiana became the first state to mandate that public schools display the Ten Commandments in every classroom, which was quickly challenged in court. The Oklahoma directive could also be challenged and is likely to provoke the latest tangle over the role of religion in public schools, an issue that has increasingly taken on national prominence.

The efforts to bring religious texts into the classroom are part of a growing national movement to create and interpret laws according to a particular conservative Christian worldview.

Oklahoma had also sought to be the first state to authorize a religious charter school, which would have funneled taxpayer dollars to an online Catholic school slated to open in August. The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled against the school this week, but the decision is likely to be appealed.

Mr. Walters, a former history teacher who served in the cabinet of Gov. Kevin Stitt before being elected state superintendent in 2022, has emerged as a lightning rod of conservative politics in Oklahoma and an unapologetic culture warrior in education. He has battled over the teaching of race and gender identity, fought against “woke ideology” in public schools and at times targeted school districts and individual teachers.

In his announcement on Thursday, Mr. Walters called the Bible “a necessary historical document to teach our kids about the history of this country, to have a complete understanding of Western civilization, to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system.”

It was not immediately clear what the instruction would entail, or which grade levels would be included. In a memo to school district leaders, Mr. Walters cited fifth through 12th grades as an example. He also said that the state might supply teaching materials for the Bible to “ensure uniformity in delivery.”

His directive faced immediate pushback, including from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which also sued to stop the religious charter school in Oklahoma and the Ten Commandments law in Louisiana.

Rachel Laser, the president of Americans United, said the group was “ready to step in and protect all Oklahoma public school children and their families from constitutional violations of their religious freedom.”

“Public schools are not Sunday schools,” she said, adding, “public schools may teach about religion, but they may not preach any religion.”

Stacey Woolley, the president of the school board for Tulsa Public Schools, which Mr. Walters has threatened to take over, said she had not received specific instructions on the curriculum, but believed it would be “inappropriate” to teach students of various faiths and backgrounds excerpts from the Bible alone, without also including other religious texts.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/27/us/oklahoma-public-schools-bible.html?

Shnorrers --- Don't Go Home Yet! " In accordance with the court’s decision, this bans government yeshiva funding ‘directly or indirectly’"

 

For the past 40 years these same yeshivas were bleeding Americans blind while receiving full funding -- Now they’re here yelling they need money again? Did they thank the "secular" government when they received billions of dollars? Nobody   believes that their Torah learning and Kollelim are going to win wars. Drive ambulances leidikgeyers, work in the offices, hospitals..enough already with your draft-dodging. After all why should any Jew die for you?

 

*Once full-scale war broke out after the State of Israel declared its existence on May 14, 1948 [CE] Reb Shraga Feivel’s [Mendlowitz] thoughts were never far from Eretz Yisrael.

A group of students saw him outside the Mesivta building one day, talking excitedly with Rabbi Gedaliah Schorr and gesticulating rapidly with the newspaper held in his hand.

“If I were your age,” he [Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz] told the students, “I would take a gun and go to Eretz Yisrael.”

SOURCE: Reb Shraga Feivel: the life and times of Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, the architect of Torah in America (chapter 26, page 338) by Yonoson Rosenblum for Artscroll / Mesorah*

"In a letter addressed to the ministries of defense, finance, and education, the Attorney General’s Office also ordered the government to refrain from transferring funds previously allocated to yeshivas for students who were studying in lieu of military service, in accordance with the court’s decision, telling the ministries they can no longer provide such support in any format."

After court ruling, AG tells IDF to immediately start drafting 3,000 Haredi students

 

Notice also orders the military to draw up a conscription plan for enlistment beyond the initial figure, bans government yeshiva funding ‘directly or indirectly’

The Attorney General’s Office on Tuesday instructed the Israel Defense Forces to immediately draft 3,000 ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students beginning July 1, following the High Court of Justice’s ruling earlier in the day that the government is obligated to conscript such men into military service.

In a letter addressed to the ministries of defense, finance, and education, the Attorney General’s Office also ordered the government to refrain from transferring funds previously allocated to yeshivas for students who were studying in lieu of military service, in accordance with the court’s decision, telling the ministries they can no longer provide such support in any format.

The instructions came hours after a landmark High Court decision that determined for the first time that ultra-Orthodox men are obligated to perform military service, since the previous legislative and administrative arrangements allowing for their blanket exemptions have now expired.

“The security establishment is obligated to act immediately to implement the ruling to draft yeshiva students who are obligated to perform military service, in accordance with the needs of the army and its capabilities, and in accordance with its commitment to draft 3,000 recruits,” Deputy Attorney General Gil Limon told the army in a letter to its legal adviser.

There are currently some 63,000 Haredi yeshiva students who, under the ruling, are obligated to perform military service, although the IDF told the court that it could realistically draft just 3,000 in the 2024 enlistment year, which began in June.

Limon pointed out that the 3,000 Haredi men who now need to be drafted must come in addition to the average number of such men who have enlisted in recent years, which the government put at 1,800 in its submission to the court.

His letter said that the military must also present a conscription plan to fully exploit the draft potential from the ultra-Orthodox community and further increase the number of conscripts above the 3,000 figure “in light of the present needs of the army and in order to advance equality in the burden of military service

Additionally, Limon stated in his letter to the ministers that under the terms of the ruling they are banned from transferring any funds “directly or indirectly” to yeshivas who have until now received funding per student who has been studying in those institutions in lieu of military service.

The order stems from the court’s ruling that the funding allocated by law for yeshiva students studying instead of performing military service was directly connected to the law allowing for blanket military service exemptions.

Since that law has expired, there is no longer any legal framework for the provision of those funds.

Limon added that this ban meant that the funding cannot be tacked on to other financial support programs enjoyed by yeshiva students, reflecting the Attorney General’s Office’s concern that the government could seek to circumvent the ruling by reallocating the funds through different support programs.

The Movement for Quality Government in Israel, one of the primary petitioning organizations in the case, said that the Attorney General’s Office’s instructions were “an important first step,” but that the scale of Haredi enlistment should be “substantially broadened” and that all 63,000 students must be drafted immediately.

Later on Tuesday, Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, who heads the Knesset committee that is currently deliberating the government’s ultra-Orthodox enlistment bill, issued a statement saying the legislation will only advance “with broad agreement.”

“Or the law won’t pass at all,” he declared.

According to an ultra-Orthodox activist involved in promoting enlistment, at least 10,000 Haredi men are exempted annually from military service under false pretenses and should enlist per the High Court of Justice ruling.

“It should start with those exempted who only say they attend yeshivot [but actually don’t attend],” Eliyahu Glatzenberg, co-founder of the Achvat Torah nonprofit, told The Times of Israel following the High Court of Justice’s ruling.

Definitions of who is Haredi vary, complicating statistics. Shomrim, an investigative journalism platform, says that by the most liberal definition, only about 1,000 Haredim enlisted in 2019 and 2020, about half of the levels in the years 2013-2018. Statistics for 2021-2023 are similar, an IDF representative told a Knesset committee in February.

“If the 10,000-odd wrongfully exempted Haredim are targeted, there’d be more understanding of it by Haredi community leaders than if the army conscripted actual yeshiva students,” said Glatzenberg.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-court-ruling-ag-tells-idf-to-immediately-start-drafting-3000-haredi-students/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2024-06-26&utm_medium=email

 

 

סיום בבא מציעא במעבר רפיח

יוסף חיים שמחי, תלמיד ישיבת הכותל, ערך סיום מסכת 'בבא מציעא' אשר למד במסגרת הדף היומי במעבר רפיח בהשתתפות חבריו למחלקה.

Hesder Yeshiva Boys Making A Siyum On Bava Metzia: Watch The Video and Cry With Joy For Such Boys!(And the rabbis that instructed them to Join The IDF)

https://www.inn.co.il/news/641527

It was widely known in Crown Heights that the Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Schneerson, then age 91, was having surgery at Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital on the day the shooting took place. Halberstam believes Baz got wind of the appointment and staked out the rebbe to avenge the Hebron massacre.

 

Her son was fatally shot on the Brooklyn Bridge. But Devorah Halberstam says the full story remains untold

 

30 years later, she’s still angry, still mourning and still seeking justice — and the truth

 

Devorah Halberstam with a photo of her son Ari, who was fatally shot on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994.

It’s been 30 years since 16-year-old Ari Halberstam was murdered by a cab driver who shot up a van taking Lubavitcher kids across the Brooklyn Bridge. The gunman, Rashid Baz, died in prison last year while serving a 141-year sentence. 

But Ari’s mother, Devorah Halberstam, wants you to know that the full story has yet to be told. 

“I’m still fighting for justice for Ari,” she said in an interview in her home in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where the first thing you see in the living room is a photo of teenage Ari, frozen in time. 

Antisemitism Notebook

“Everything was minimized and contained: I had to fight to have it classified as terrorism,” she continued. “I know all the pieces of the puzzle. And I’ll never understand: Who were we protecting? All the evidence was there.”

Among the “obvious questions” she’s angry that Baz never answered: “How’d you get the guns? Why were you on the bridge at the same time as the van? You just bumped into them? You just happened to be fully loaded with a machine gun, a Glock pistol and a ‘street sweeper’ .380, and you said, ‘Oh, Hasids on the bus, let me shoot them up.’”

And, most important: “Who else was in on it?”

Was there a conspiracy?

Halberstam called the shooting an act of terror from the outset, but it took five years for the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice to classify the case as terrorism. The government still rejects Halberstam’s contention that Baz was part of a conspiracy. But the Anti-Defamation League posted a new $50,000 reward last year for information in the case, saying: “The question remains: Were others involved?” 

I sent a detailed request to the U.S. attorney’s office for comment on this story, but did not hear back.

Why, one might ask, does any of this matter now? Baz is dead. And Halberstam has spent the last three decades getting antiterrorism laws passed. She also co-founded a Jewish children’s museum in Ari’s memory. So what more does she want, this woman who tears up in a nanosecond at the mention of her first-born son — a basketball player who made everyone laugh, a child who taught his Hasidic mother that you can be, in Halberstams’s words, “deeply religious” and at the same time, “an all-American kid”? 

What could she possibly expect from the meetings she still holds with government officials, badgering them about a case they closed the book on years ago? 

What she wants, she said, is the truth: “The truth doesn’t go away. And it needs to be told over and over.” 

FOIA requests denied 

As a Jewish New Yorker myself, and as a reporter who covered the Lubavitcher community — including the Crown Heights riots — for The Associated Press in the 1990s, I’ve followed this case for a long time. I’ve filed Freedom of Information Act requests with various governmental agencies over the years, hoping for answers to Halberstam’s questions. But all I’ve gotten is a few unenlightening pages related to the deportation of Baz’s uncle to Jordan. He and another man concealed evidence by repairing Baz’s shot-up car. 

I thought this year might be different. Why keep things classified 30 years later if the government believes there was no conspiracy?

The reason given: “national security.”

I appealed, arguing that the public has a right to know and questioning the logic of keeping anything secret this many years on. How come I can read all about the government’s failures in preventing 9/11 and the murders of 3,000 people, but a March 14, 1994, cable labeled “Terrorist Threat Warning System in the United States” in an online archive of Halberstam documents remains classified? 

So far I’ve lost my appeals.

“I hope you write that in your article,” Halberstam said. “They’re hiding something.”

Revenge for the Hebron massacre 

This 1999 report from the Department of Justice reclassified Ari’s murder as terrorism. 

Authorities initially characterized Baz’s 1994 attack as “road rage” following a traffic dispute. Then at trial, the defense said that Baz, who was Lebanese, was traumatized growing up during that country’s civil war, and that a “flashback” prompted him to shoot when he saw the boys in the van wearing the black hats and coats marking them as Jews. 

Baz’s lawyer also said he was angry over a massacre of 29 Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron, carried out by religious extremist Baruch Goldstein five days before the bridge shooting. Baz’s mother was Palestinian. 

Witnesses testified that Baz heard a “raging antisemitic sermon” at a Brooklyn mosque hours after the Hebron massacre. “This takes the mask off the Jews,” the imam reportedly said. “It shows them to be racist and fascist and as bad as the Nazis. Palestinians are suffering from the occupation, and it’s time to end it.”   

Years later, Baz told the authorities: “I only shot them because they were Jewish.” That admission stands in stark contrast to a police investigator’s comment, early on, that Baz had “no politics and no real religion.” One lawyer described Baz as simply “nuts.”

“But he wasn’t,” Halberstam said. “He was crazy as a fox, as all terrorists are. He did this with intent.” 

‘It wasn’t a coincidence’

Aerial view of the Brooklyn Bridge.

It was widely known in Crown Heights that the Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Schneerson, then age 91, was having surgery at Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital on the day the shooting took place. Halberstam believes Baz got wind of the appointment and staked out the rebbe to avenge the Hebron massacre. 

Halberstam thinks the authorities had an inkling something was up because police stopped by Chabad headquarters the night before, telling people not to follow the rebbe’s motorcade “for security reasons.”

After the rebbe left the hospital, his entourage entered the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel in Manhattan to take him home, and officials temporarily blocked the tunnel to other cars. Baz, driving his cab, “couldn’t get into the tunnel after the rebbe,” Halberstam said, so he headed to the nearest alternate route: the Brooklyn Bridge. “It wasn’t a coincidence that he bumped into this van,” she said.

Halberstam believes Baz targeted the Jewish boys wearing black hats and coats as a substitute for the rebbe. He shot 40 rounds at the van while driving. Ari was one of four boys hit, and the only one to die.

Baz fled back to Brooklyn where his uncle, who owned the car, helped remove the shattered windshield. Where Baz got the ammunition and guns — which he claimed he kept in the cab for self-defense after being robbed — remains unknown. 

Civil rights 

Halberstam said the case of Ahmaud Arbery, the Black jogger murdered in Georgia in 2020 by two white men, “was an eye-opener for me.” Arbery’s mother successfully fought to have that case prosecuted on federal hate crime charges, not just murder.  

Halberstam feels the bridge shooting — which she describes as the “worst attack on Jews in the history of New York City” — should also have been investigated by the feds as a violation of the boys’ civil rights, and not simply a shooting under state law.

Police at a 30th anniversary memorial for Ari Halberstam on the Brooklym Bridge

“My son was murdered because he was identifiable as a Jew,” she said. “So is there a double standard because they were Jews? That’s the very big question in retrospect.” In other words, she believes antisemitism, on the part of investigators and prosecutors, may have influenced how the case was handled. 

But she said she understands why the case wasn’t immediately classified as terrorism: “Terrorism was on nobody’s radar screen in 1994.” The first World Trade Center bombing had taken place the year before, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000, “but they treated that as isolated.” 

Still, at a commemoration held at the bridge on the 30th anniversary of the attack, New York Mayor Eric Adams said Halberstam was prescient in calling the case terrorism. “If we would have listened, there may have been a different approach to Sept. 11, 2001,” he said.

A mother’s grief

Halberstam’s grief is never far away. Sobs caught in her throat over and over as we talked.

“That’s the part that you can’t share with everybody,” she said. “It lives in your heart. It’s in your own private moments. It’s not that people are not compassionate. It’s not that people don’t care. It’s not that people don’t have patience for it. It’s that unless a person’s been there, there’s just no explaining it. There’s no, ‘You’ll get over it.’ There’s no ‘Time will heal.’

“It doesn’t matter what I do,” she continued. “You fill it up, but there’s a hole at the bottom, so it just goes right through. It’s empty.”

Ari had four younger siblings. He’s forever 16, but they grew up, married, had kids of their own. When I asked Halberstam how many grandchildren she has, she said, “Not enough,” because Ari’s are missing.

Ari’s legacy

Ari’s murder turned Halberstam into an activist. She’s credited with helping to write the first laws in New York State against terrorism; she lectures and trains law enforcement on hate crimes, terrorism and antisemitism; and she’s an advocate for victims’ rights, serving, among other things, on a city commission for hate crimes. 

And yet, she said, “If anybody says, ‘Look what you’ve accomplished’ — don’t even go there with me. It’s on the coattails of my son’s murder. I’m still the mother in the corner, weeping for my dead child.”

READ MORE:

https://forward.com/news/629361/devorah-halberstam-ari-brooklyn-bridge-shooting/?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

טאטאל'ע קום שוין אהיים

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

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

 

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

UFO (illustrative).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will aliens help Israel during war?

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

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

Specifically, he said they might even take sides.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

A WARM MOMENT WITH MY REBBE

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yehi zichro baruch.

 

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

 

 

There will be Divrei Hesped

for the Mashgiach

Moreinu Horav

Moshe Wolfson zt"l

In our Bais Medrash

425 East 9th Street

Today - 3:30

If you are unable to make it in person

It will be livestreamed on

Torah Anytime

www.torahanytime.com/RavWolfsonHespedim

 

Harav Wolfson ztl Hamodiapdf

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ng4pw4xi2fvk3jw5kz3ob/Harav-Wolfson-ztl-Hamodia.pdf?rlkey=qvxqyxa0ktrsts3q09vwn7chd&e=1&dl=0

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

 

Pain and Honor Mark BTJ Wartime Memorial Day Ceremony

Boys Town Jerusalem

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

 

Students spent Memorial Day visiting Mt. Herzl.

 

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

 

Ofir’s friends shared memories.

 

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

 

BTJ grads have been fighting on the front lines

 

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

 

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

 

It was important to come to the Memorial Ceremony

 

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

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

 

ABOUT BOYS TOWN JERUSALEM:

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

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

Living in fear as a parent of IDF soldiers 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

What changes when you send your children to serve?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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