The great political players of our moment include university presidents who cannot explain why they’ll expel students for failing to use made-up genderless pronouns (Zie! Zim! Zir! Zis! Zieself!) but not for calling for a global pogrom against Jews, which needs “context.” They include Jan. 6 vandals and goons and the former (possibly future) president who insists that the ones convicted of crimes are “hostages” and “political prisoners.”

 

Election 2024: You Asked for It, America

 

The prospect of a Biden-Trump rematch shows how far U.S. democracy has fallen—and we have no one to blame but ourselves. Don’t blame “the system,” you gormless weasels. You chose this.

 

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Tucker Carlson’s claim that Volodymyr Zelensky, a Jew, simply wants to persecute Christians and that pro-Ukrainian elements in the U.S. hate Vladimir Putin because he—a former KGB goon—is a defender of Christian piety. Meanwhile, Rep. Rashida Tlaib and her Squad can’t get entirely on the right side of the massacre-the-Jews issue.

 

The problem with campaign rally songs is that nobody ever picks the right one. Franklin Roosevelt chose “Happy Days Are Here Again” in the middle of the Great Depression with Adolf Hitler rising to power in Germany. Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” has charmed Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump, none of whom apparently ever actually listened to the lyrics of that lament for post-Vietnam malaise and economic decline. George H.W. Bush used Woody Guthrie’s pinko anthem “This Land Is Your Land.”

Lately, Trump has been using Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.,” a diabetes-inducing hunk of treacle that makes me want to join the Islamic State, while Joe Biden has gone back to the Guthrie well with a version of “Shipping Up to Boston” by the Dropkick Murphys, a band that, like Joe Biden, is still getting by playing hits from the 1990s.

I have my own theme song for the 2024 election, David Bowie’s magnificent 1995 collaboration with Brian Eno: “I’m Afraid of Americans.” It is an anthem for our times.

Presidential elections are almost always showy, nationalistic affairs, full of appeals to patriotism and unity, occasions upon which even Ivy League diversity officers wave the flag and festoon the public square in red, white and blue. And that points to the tension at the heart of the dreadful and contemptible 2024 presidential election, which almost certainly will be fought out by Donald Trump, a depraved game-show host who tried to stage a coup d’état when he lost his 2020 re-election bid, and Joe Biden, a plagiarist and fabulist first elected to public office 53 years ago who is going to be spending a lot of time this campaign season thinking about his family’s influence-peddling business and the tricky questions related to it, like whether you can deduct hookers as a business expense.

Run Old Glory up the highest flagpole you can find, but 2024 is going to be the least patriotism-inspiring election in American history so far, a reminder of what a depraved, decadent, backward, low-minded, primitive, superstitious and morally corrupt people we have become.

Don’t blame “the system,” you gormless weasels. You chose this.

Rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

For most of my life, the dominant myth that informed American politics was that there was too much “big money” in the system, that Washington lobbyists in Gucci loafers gathered with self-seeking party bosses in smoke-filled rooms to subvert the will of We the People and foist their preferred candidates and policies upon the country. The moral of the story was that the common people do not have enough of a voice.

But that’s the great lie of American politics (and of democracy at large): that the people cannot fail but can only be failed.

Conservatives told themselves a carefully tailored version of that story, one in which Republican Party careerists insufficiently committed to limited government allowed themselves to be pushed around by the liberal media, selling out their principles and the electoral interests of the GOP so that they could feel welcome “at Georgetown cocktail parties,” as the slavering imbeciles of talk radio still put it. The left told itself a similarly inane story, with Big Business turning the Democratic establishment into corporate shills with no interest in anything more radical or fundamental than smoothing out the rougher edges of capitalism rather than—finally!—“putting people over profits,” as the idiots over in their village put it.

And then, a funny thing happened. Two funny things, in fact.

First, the Internet broke the old media oligopoly, which at the height of its power had consisted of three newspapers—the

New York Times

, the Washington Post and this one—alongside three television networks that aped those three newspapers, and the Associated Press, which digested all that and regurgitated it, birdlike, into the pages of 10,000 local newspapers. This ensured that the same biases that shaped the political coverage of the Washington Post ended up in the Sacramento Bee and the Tulsa World, serving up D.C.-N.Y.C. gruel at a hundred million breakfast tables across the fruited plain.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican.

With the old media gatekeepers gone, right-wing content creators rushed in and filled the world with QAnon kookery on Facebook, conspiracy theories powerful enough to vault the cretinous likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene into Congress, fake news sponsored by Moscow and Beijing and fake-ish news subsidized by Viktor Orbán and his happy junta, and whatever kind of poison butterfly Tucker Carlson is going to be when he emerges from the chrysalis of filth he’s built around himself. The prim consensus of 200 Northeastern newspaper editors has been replaced by the sardonic certitude of 100 million underemployed rage-monkeys and ignoramuses on Twitter. The news was democratized, and, as such, it became corrupt, irresponsible and ugly.

Second, the same forces that disintegrated the old media cabal have radically democratized fundraising for political campaigns and committees. Whatever control those smug party bosses once lorded over candidates mostly had resided in the power of the purse. But the Internet made it possible for politicians and hustlers to go straight to the people, who don’t want to hear about the need to raise their Medicare premiums and reduce their Social Security checks to avoid a national fiscal crisis.

No, We the People want to hear more from that Marjorie lady about the Jewish space lasers and how Donald Trump is going to wreak vengeance against the “communists” and “Marxists” who run…

Microsoft

, and how vaccines are what gave them lumbago. The digital masses may not be dropping bundles of C-notes into the campaign contribution tip jar, but they hit that tip jar pretty often with smaller change, and there are an awful lot of them.

Whatever real power big-money donors had to shape the political agenda has been dwarfed by the power—the much more thoroughly corrupting power—of small-dollar donors, who, unlike the National Association of Realtors or the AFL-CIO, do not have a long-term policy agenda or the attention spans to maintain one, because they are in this regard not citizens in a meaningful sense but only content-consumers. Spend a couple of hours reading political posts on Facebook and tell me that the smoke-filled room doesn’t look pretty good by comparison.

Like the protesters’ placards say: “This is what democracy looks like.” And it’s kind of gross.

An Occupy supporter in Denver, November 2011.

The great political players of our moment include university presidents who cannot explain why they’ll expel students for failing to use made-up genderless pronouns (Zie! Zim! Zir! Zis! Zieself!) but not for calling for a global pogrom against Jews, which needs “context.” They include Jan. 6 vandals and goons and the former (possibly future) president who insists that the ones convicted of crimes are “hostages” and “political prisoners.” They include Proud Boys cosplaying revolutionaries and the college professors who are sure there were some very fine people sawing the heads off Jewish children in Israel.

Meanwhile, the family-values guys over in the evangelical Christian world are showing more loyalty to Donald Trump than he ever showed to any of his wives, insisting that the lying, chiseling, philandering, coup-plotting grifter and occasional porn-movie performer is Jesus’ Own Personal Guy chosen to hold off the forces of darkness in Anno Domini 2024. Apparently, all that old “Thou shalt not bear false witness” stuff has gone right down the theological toilet.

Nobody makes boots tall enough to wade through the avalanche of B.S. headed our way in the next 11 months. Republicans, having decided that knee-walking Trump sycophant Kevin McCarthy was not quite sycophantic enough, have entrusted their legislative agenda to Mike Johnson, a swamp grotesque from Louisiana who was among the leading 2020 coup plotters and apparently believes that he is the second coming of Moses. And so critical national priorities will be taking a back seat, for the foreseeable future, to utter kookery.

If you think Ukraine aid has been held up by legitimate concerns about border security, you are not paying attention. Ukraine aid is being held up because a sizable portion of Republicans are Putinists, in and out of the closet to varying degrees, and believe (or pretend to believe) Tucker Carlson’s claim that Volodymyr Zelensky, a Jew, simply wants to persecute Christians and that pro-Ukrainian elements in the U.S. hate Vladimir Putin because he—a former KGB goon—is a defender of Christian piety. Meanwhile, Rep. Rashida Tlaib and her Squad can’t get entirely on the right side of the massacre-the-Jews issue.

 

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat

If Trump wins, he’ll try his best to act like some kind of midcentury caudillo, the unholy spawn of Augusto Pinochet and Don Rickles. If he loses, then expect something along the lines of Jan. 6 or worse. But if you think Democrats can’t hold their own when it comes to irresponsible claims about election-rigging and voting-machine tampering, then you weren’t around for 2016, 2004, 2000—or any other big election that Republicans have won going back to 1864.

Sometimes, a country is doing so well that it can afford a silly season. This is not that time, and the U.S. is not that country. The government has a very, very large military budget—but as of 2023, spending on interest payments for federal debt now exceeds defense appropriations. Which is to say, we are spending more money refinancing Medicare subsidies for the dentures your granddad got 20 years ago than we are spending on things like infrastructure, scientific research or, you know, building aircraft carriers and making sure all those nuclear missiles we built back in the Reagan years still work. And the Reagan-era stuff is the new stuff: We’re still enriching uranium in the same facility they were using back in Robert Oppenheimer’s day.

So who do we want sitting across the table from Xi Jinping? Do we prefer the guy who got flummoxed celebrating the musical legacy of “LL…Jay…Cool…J…Uhh” before calling him “boy,” or do we want the guy who was in “Playboy Video Centerfold: Playmate 2000 Bernaola Twins” and who, you know, tried to overthrow the government by invalidating the lawful election of his feckless successor last time around?

Your choice, America. Enjoy all that pure, uncut democracy.

A QAnon supporter at a rally in Olympia, Wash., May 2020.

Democracy isn’t our form of government. It is a feature of our form of government—an important and irreplaceable element—but it is only a means. The end is well-ordered liberty. Democracy works well only when it is enabled and fortified by a great many institutions that are not in themselves democratic—or that at least aren’t supposed to be democratic.

One of those important institutions is functional political parties, which, in a sane world, would keep figures such as Donald Trump—and here I mean 2016 Donald Trump, to say nothing of the Caligula-Travis Bickle hybrid he has become—well away from political power, along with, at this stage in the game, Joe Biden. All those gatekeepers occupying the party offices, running the fundraising operations, working in the media, conspiring at the bar at Café Milano in D.C.—it turns out they were doing something really quite valuable, whether they intended to or didn’t.

Some of the institutions that make democracy work—that make it tolerable—are formal, like the Bill of Rights. Some of them are the result of longstanding conventions. But many of them are organic and ad hoc, institutions and norms that evolved in particular conditions for particular purposes—and that have been swept aside by the radically democratic and relentlessly homogenizing forces of political life in the digital age.

China, Israel, the debt: Dealing with any of the urgent issues before us is going to be hard in the best-case scenario. And say what you will about Donald Trump or Joe Biden, nobody outside of a few daft cultists believes that either one of these senescent miscreants represents the best-case scenario. Being president is hard, it’s harder if you’re stupid, and it’s even harder if you are stupid and your next landmark birthday is your 90th.

That being stipulated, the No. 1 issue in the 2024 presidential campaign is not the debt, the economy, Ukraine, Israel or crime—the main issue is, beyond any doubt, immigration. At least, it’s the one at the top of my agenda and foremost in my own thoughts.

I just haven’t settled on where to go.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/election-2024-you-asked-for-it-america-8028bc04

Holidays are a calendar. They mark points in emotional and physical time. They remind of us who we are. Chanukah is a dangerous holiday because it asks us to question our comfort zones. Its overt militarism and its dangerous underlying message that a time comes when you must choose between the destruction of your culture and a war you can't win, is too frightening for a comfortable age.

 Every year that we celebrate Chanukah, the left makes another attempt to "desecrate the temple" by destroying its meaning and replacing it with the usual grab bag of social justice issues under the union label of "Tikkun Olam" For those liberals who believe that Jewish identity should be limited to donating to help Haiti, agitating for illegal aliens and promoting the environment; Chanukah is a threatening holiday. They have secularized it, dressed it up with teddy bears and toys, trimmed it with the ecology and civil rights of their new faith.

 

A Dangerous Holiday

Many celebrate Chanukah as nothing more than celebrations of 'celebration', the rituals and rites of entertainment, a special food, a symbol whose meaning they don't remember and a little family fun.

Chanukah is not a safe holiday. It is a victory celebration in a guerrilla war. It is a reminder that the most recent war on Jerusalem was preceded long before by Antiochus's war on Jerusalem. It is a brief light in a period of great darkness.

As we light the menorah, bringing light out of that darkness, we are called on to remember to treasure the price of that light. It is brought forth through the divine matter of heavenly miracles and the earthly matter of suffering and blood.

Chanukah exists today because a small family, the remnant of a faithful priesthood, saw darkness, where many were blinded by the light of prosperity and progress, and they saw the light in the past, where their Hellenistic cousins saw only darkness.

This most dangerous of holidays does not represent a final victory, but the challenge to see the darkness around us and understand what it will take to summon even a little light.

The trivialization of Chanukah into camp and comedy, an eye roll at the lameness of tradition and the repetitiveness of games and jokes intended for children is its own kind of darkness. Those who would strip away the historical and religious meaning of Chanukah today would have been fighting against the Maccabees. The battle to preserve the meaning of Chanukah is part of the struggle to preserve the Jewish traditions and culture from the universalism of Hellenism.

The Maccabees fought for freedom of religion. They fought against the tyranny of a universalistic mass culture. But they also fought to make faith meaningful again. That is why Chanukah is more than a celebration of victory over what they fought against, as important a component of the holiday as it is, but a celebration of what they fought for, to reach Jerusalem and feel the presence of G-d.

When we light the menorah, we are meant to do more than perform rote ritual, and then on to childish games, but to feel, at least for a moment, the darkness that surrounds us, and aspire to feel G-d.

Chanukah is a dangerous holiday because it asks us to question our comfort zones. Its overt militarism and its dangerous underlying message that a time comes when you must choose between the destruction of your culture and a war you can't win, is too frightening for a comfortable age. The children of a material age are unwilling to consider the dark days in which a doomed war must be fought if the soul of the nation is to survive. It is too alien a notion for most. It was an alien one for the descendants of the pioneers who had struggled and sacrificed to return from exile, only for their descendants to eagerly embrace the gymnasiums and baths, the stadiums and idols of a new empire.

There are worse things than death and slavery, the fate that waited for the Maccabees and their allies had they failed, the fates that came anyway when the last of the Maccabees were betrayed and murdered by Caesar's Edomite minister, whose sons went on to rule over Israel as the Herodian dynasty. Nations can survive the mass murder of their bodies, but not the death of their spirit. A nation does not die, until its soul dies, and the soul of a nation is in its culture and its faith.

The mystery of history is that peoples endure through their willingness to for their people. that first candle, that first glimmer of flame over oil, marks the night that the Maccabee forces entered Jerusalem, driving out the enemy armies and their Jewish collaborators, and reclaiming their people's culture and religion.

The light of the flame was a powerful message sent across time that even in the darkest hour, hope was not lost. And G-d would not abandon the people. Time passed the Maccabees fell, Jerusalem was occupied and ethnically cleansed over and over again, and still the menorah burned on. A covert message that still all hope was not lost. That Israel would rise again.

Israel had used signal fires and torches held up on mountain tops to pass along important news. The lighting of the menorah was a miniature signal fire, a perpetuation of the temple light, its eight-day light a reminder that even the smallest light can burn beyond expectation and light beyond belief and that those who trust in G-d and fight for the freedom to believe in Him, should never abandon hope.

That divine signal fire first lit in the deserts by freed slaves has been passed on for thousands of years. Today the menorah is on the seal of the State of Israel, the product of a modern day Chanukah. The mark of a Jerusalem liberated in a miracle of six days, not eight. Six as in the number of the original temple Menorah. And the one on the seal as well.

For those liberals who believe that Jewish identity should be limited to donating to help Haiti, agitating for illegal aliens and promoting the environment; Chanukah is a threatening holiday. They have secularized it, dressed it up with teddy bears and toys, trimmed it with the ecology and civil rights of their new faith. Occasionally a Jewish liberal learns the history of it and writes an outraged essay about nationalism and militarism, but mostly they are content to bury it in the same dark cellar that they store the rest of the history of their people and the culture that they left behind.

Holidays aren't mere parties, they are messages. Knots of time that we tie around the fingers of our lives so that we remember what our ancestors meant us to never forget. That they lived and died for a reason. The party is a celebration, but if we forget what it celebrates, then it becomes a celebration of celebration. A hollow and soulless festival of the self. The Maccabees fought because they believed they had something worth fighting for. Not for their possessions, but for their traditions, their families and their G-d. The celebration of Chanukah is not just how we remember them, but how we remember that we are called upon to keep their watch. To take up their banner and carry their sword.

History is a wheel and as it turns, we see the old continents of time rising again, events revisiting themselves as the patterns of the past become new again. Ancient battles become new wars. And old struggles have to be re-fought again until we finally get them right.

Modiin, the rural center of the old Maccabee resistance, is a revived city today, larger than it ever was. Modiin-Maccabim has some 80,000 people living there. In the ancient days, this was where the Maccabee clan rose against the Seleucid conquerors over religious freedom. Today it is a place that the European Union labels an illegal settlement. A place that Jews have no right to live even though it is within sight of the Maccabees who lived and died there. Over two thousand years after Chanukah, Jews are still not allowed to live in peace in Modiin.

The new Maccabees are farmers and teachers, men and women who build families and homes in the lands of their ancestors, who brave the threats of terrorists and international tyrants to live their lives and raise their children. Knowing that they will not be allowed to live in peace, that everything they stand for is hated by the UN, in the capitals of great empires and even by their own government, they still put flame to wick and mark the first day of many days of the miracle that revived the spirit of a nation and inspires it to this day.

Not only may Jews not live in Modiin, but they may not live in Jerusalem either. And yet they do. They persist, to the eternal frustration of empires, in this quiet resistance of building a future with their buildings, their bodies and their lives. They persist in living where so many would like them to die. And they persist in lighting the menorah when so many would rather that it be forgotten.

The Jew today is called on to forget. To turn his children into bricks in order to construct the utopia of their new world order. To bend to the progressive wheel and wear the social justice chain, and cast his own offspring into the sea of zero population growth. To give up his  nation, his land, his faith and his future to toil in the shadow of the pyramids of socialism. To go down to labor in Egypt once more, in South America and Haitian slums, in barrios and villages, in ghettos and madinas, to give up who he is in order to serve others in the new slavery of social justice.

It takes courage to resist physical oppression, but it takes even greater courage to resist cultural oppression. The terms of physical resistance are easy to understand. Force is used against force. Cultural resistance is far more difficult, and by the time the necessity for it is apparent, it can often be too late.The Maccabees had to resist not only physical oppression and armed force, but the cultural oppression of a system that regarded their monotheism, their nationalism, their traditions and rituals as barbaric. A system that much of their own fellow Jews had already accepted as right and proper.

The Maccabees rose up not only against physical oppression, Israel had and would face that over and over again, they rose up against an assault on their religious and cultural  identity.  The lighting of the Menorah is the perpetuation of that cultural resistance and when it is performed properly then it reminds us that cultural oppression, like physical oppression, is ubiquitous, and that just as the forms of cultural oppression can often go unnoticed, so too the resistance to it can go unnoticed as well.

Every year that we celebrate Chanukah, the left makes another attempt to "desecrate the temple" by destroying its meaning and replacing it with the usual grab bag of social justice issues under the union label of "Tikkun Olam". And each time we push back against their ruthless assault on Jewish history and tradition the same way that the Maccabees did, by reclaiming our sacred places, cleaning away the filth left behind by the occupiers, and lighting the Menorah to remind us of who we are.

Chanukah marks the culmination of the Maccabee campaign for the liberation of Jerusalem. It is the time when we remember the men and women who refused to submit to the perversion of their values and the theft of their land. It reminds us that we must not allow our land to be stolen under any guise or allow our religion, history and culture to be perverted on any pretext. The light of the Menorah reminds us that the sacredness of a nation is in its spirit and that preserving that spirit is an eternal struggle against the conquerors of land and the tyrants of souls.

Chanukah is a Holiday of Resistance. It commemorates the physical and spiritual resistance that is required of us sooner or later in all times. Chanukah takes us back to the armed resistance and the moral awakening that liberated Jerusalem and connected the Jewish people with their G-d once again. And that reminds us to never give up, not in the face of an assault on our bodies or on our culture. The lights go out, but they are lit again, each day, for thousands of years, reminding us to hold on to our traditions and our faith, rather than trade them in for the trendy trinkets and cheap jewelry of progressive liberalism.

To light the menorah on Chanukah is to pass on a signal fire that has been kept lit for thousands of years. From the first holiday of Passover, after which the freed slaves kindled the first Menorah, to the final holiday of Chanukah, that light burns on. The historical cycle of Jewish holidays begins with Moshe confronting Pharaoh and demanding the freedom of the Jewish people. It ends with the Maccabees standing up to the tyranny of Antiochus and fighting for the right of the Jewish people to live under their own rule on their own land.

The lights of the menorah embody the spirit of the Jewish people. A spirit that has outlived the atrocities of every tyrant. In the heart of the flame that has burned for a thousand years lives the soul of a people.

https://www.danielgreenfield.org/?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Daniel+Greenfield+Article%3A+A+Dangerous+Holiday&utm_campaign=20231214_m178161488_Daniel+Greenfield+Article%3A+%28post_title%29&utm_term=sultan_header_new_minimal_alt_5b__2__jpg_3F1655324709

The War in Gaza: A Conversation with Dan Senor and Douglas Murray

Behind the Birth of an Anti-Vaccine Story A 24-year-old’s sudden death devastated his family — and caught the attention of the movement of vaccine opponents.

George Watts Sr. with a photograph of his son, George Watts Jr., who died in October 2021. George Jr.’s cause of death was documented as Covid-19 vaccine-related myocarditis.

Before he received his second shot of a Covid-19 vaccine, there was little reason to think that George Watts Jr. was about to die.

He was 24 and showed no obvious health problems. His family said he lived cautiously. He spent most of his time playing video games in his room at his parents’ house in Elmira, a city in south-central New York.

That is where he was when he collapsed on Oct. 27, 2021.

George Jr.’s mother, Kathy, called 911 and started C.P.R. Paramedics rushed him to the emergency room, where doctors pronounced him dead.

What happened?

To the family, the answer was instantly obvious. “I blame that damn Covid vaccine,” Ms. Watts said in the hospital’s waiting room after learning her son had died, according to her husband, George Watts Sr.

The medical examiner at a New York hospital reached a similar conclusion, adding more specifics: The cause of death, he wrote, was “Covid-19 vaccine-related myocarditis,” an uncommon and often mild condition involving inflammation of the heart. It can develop when the body battles viruses, responds to certain vaccines, or nearly a dozen other reasons. Multiple studies say the condition can develop in some people, particularly young men, who receive a Covid-19 vaccine.

Before long, news of George Jr.’s death ricocheted around the internet, transforming the family’s tragedy into a powerful anecdote inside anti-vaccine communities. It was shared as an urgent warning about vaccine dangers on online forums, podcasts and Facebook groups. The Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit founded by the anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., contacted the Watts family and solicited donations for the organization off their name.

To vaccine opponents, George Jr.’s case delivered an unambiguous life-or-death warning: Don’t believe what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells you. Vaccines can kill, and here was all the proof anyone needed.

As those claims spread online, many medical experts started raising questions about the story. Myocarditis could have been the culprit, they said, but it was difficult to conclude that the vaccine was the cause — especially without further examination of George Jr.’s body. That is now impossible. His body was cremated.

The C.D.C. received specimens from George Jr.’s autopsy and is finalizing a pathology report, according to the New York State Department of Health. The agency has not released any information publicly, citing privacy concerns.

Those outstanding questions, however, have not stopped activists, radio hosts and disinformation peddlers from declaring unambiguously that George Jr.’s death resulted from his Covid-19 vaccination, and painted myocarditis as an automatic death sentence instead of a typically mild condition. And they are reaching a growing audience.

A Young Man Gets Vaccinated

The New York Times conducted dozens of interviews over several months for this article — including with the Watts family; the coroner’s office in Bradford County, Pa., which reviewed the case; and myocarditis experts, pathologists, lawyers and doctors who have reviewed details about George Jr.’s case.

When George Sr. talks about his son, a few things stand out. George Jr. was an avowed homebody, spending so much time at home that he planned to live there forever. He was so careful that he cringed at the thought of running a yellow light in the car.

He hoped to transform his passion for video games into a career by enrolling in community college in nearby Corning for computer science. The pandemic derailed much of his campus experience, and his grades were slipping heading into his last semester because of remote learning. He thought getting back to the classroom could turn things around.

But first, he needed to be vaccinated — a requirement for students at the school, run by the State University of New York.

His parents did not trust the vaccine. George Sr. believed it had been developed too quickly.

George Jr. had avoided the vaccine earlier in 2021 when it had received emergency-use authorization. He received his first dose on Aug. 27, 2021, four days after the Food and Drug Administration gave it its full approval.

Shortly after receiving his second dose, on Sept. 17, George Jr. started feeling pain in his heels, according to medical records and his father’s account. By early October, his fingers started going numb, and he had difficulty holding onto objects.

By mid-October, his father was so concerned that he drove him to the emergency room. Among other things, George Jr. had the markers of an upper respiratory infection: sinus congestion, a sore throat and a cough. An X-ray showed no abnormalities or fluid in his lungs, according to a summary of the visit from the coroner’s report. He said he didn’t have chest pain or shortness of breath, according to the coroner’s investigation, two common symptoms among myocarditis patients.

Doctors diagnosed him with a sinus infection and bronchitis and prescribed antibiotics. He also started taking NyQuil.

A week later, George Jr. was rushed back to the emergency room after coughing so much that he started vomiting. Doctors found no obvious lung problems, his heart wasn’t enlarged, and there were no signs of cardiac issues, according to the coroner’s report.

If there were clear signs of myocarditis, doctors would most likely have monitored George Jr. and prescribed drugs, like blood pressure medications, beta blockers or corticosteroids.

Eight days after his emergency room visit, George Jr. collapsed and died. His body was transported 40 minutes east, to Binghamton, for an autopsy at Lourdes Hospital.

The medical examiner at Lourdes found that the heart muscle, the myocardium, was losing some of its strength and sagging. Parts of the heart, when examined under a microscope, were inflamed. Both are clues that point toward myocarditis.

Soon after the government authorized Covid vaccines for the public, myocarditis became a flashpoint for health officials and vaccine opponents.

Myocarditis sometimes interferes with the heart’s function, interrupting electrical signals and causing chest pain, an irregular heartbeat and, in extremely rare cases, cardiac arrest.

It is well established that the mRNA vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna slightly increase the risk of developing myocarditis, especially in young men who receive two or more doses. The overall numbers are small — there were 224 verified cases of myocarditis among vaccinated children and young adults in the United States from late 2020 to mid-2022, out of the nearly seven million vaccine doses that were administered, according to one study. Most patients recover from the condition after at least 90 days, according to another study published in late 2022.

Doctors concluded the benefits from getting vaccinated far outweighed the risks. Their views were supported by the finding that myocarditis was significantly more likely to develop after a Covid-19 infection than from the vaccine, according to a report from 2021.

Deaths tied to the vaccine are extremely rare. Worldwide, there are a few known myocarditis deaths among vaccinated individuals, among hundreds of millions who received a shot.

Partly in response to myocarditis risks, the C.D.C. has changed its guidelines, increasing the amount of time boys and men from 12 to 39 years old should wait between their first and second vaccine dose — eight weeks, up from three to four weeks.

Yet the agency also continues to say that no one has died from Covid-19 vaccine-related myocarditis.

An Anti-Vaccine Story Takes Off

Almost as soon as Covid vaccines were approved in Washington, concerns about myocarditis started fueling claims from anti-vaccine activists. Fears that the vaccine would kill scores of Americans trended repeatedly on social media under the ominous hashtag #DiedSuddenly.

Prominent celebrity deaths helped the idea gain traction. Vaccine opponents said Lisa Marie Presley died in January from myocarditis after getting vaccinated, though an autopsy later found she died of a bowel obstruction. The deaths of Bob Saget and Betty White, two actors, and DMX, a rapper, spurred similar claims. None of those deaths were linked to the Covid vaccine.

Elon Musk, the owner of X, also suggested vaccine-related myocarditis was to blame after Bronny James, a son of the basketball star LeBron James, fell ill in July. Doctors later pointed to Mr. James’s congenital heart defect as the culprit.

Yet in the case of George Jr.’s death, vaccine opponents had one piece of concrete evidence: a death certificate that placed the blame squarely on the vaccine.

After his son’s death, George Sr. turned to Facebook, broadcasting details about his son’s story and posting images of the coroner’s report. His language was so forceful that Facebook temporarily limited his ability to post.

“I want to say how much I love and miss my son George J everyday that goes by it hurts us even more,” he wrote on Facebook. “I would give up my soul to get him back, that is what I’m willing to give up my afterlife just to have him here again.”

George Watts Sr. wears a bracelet commemorating his son George Jr.’s life.

Noticing that George Jr.’s story could yield some political influence, a collection of anti-vaccine influencers sought out the Watts family, introducing them to large platforms and even larger goals.

Shannon Joy, a radio and podcast host in Rochester, brought George Sr. onto her show for an hourlong interview in which they both shared concerns about vaccines.

“It is so hard for people to stand up and tell their stories of people who were maimed and tragically killed by Covid-19 vaccines,” Ms. Joy said during the show. “But we need to see the people. We need to hear their stories.”

In her mind, George Jr.’s case “got to the truth” about vaccines despite pushback from mysterious forces.

Children’s Health Defense, the group founded by Mr. Kennedy, approached the Watts family, kick-starting a relationship that resulted in a long-shot lawsuit brought by the Watts family and C.H.D. against the Defense Department, which had overseen the vaccine’s development under Operation Warp Speed. The lawsuit claimed the department had used George Jr. as “an unwitting guinea pig” in a “mass human experiment.” The group also started fund-raising in George Jr.’s name. (The Defense Department filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in September.)

Ms. Joy had also informed George Sr. about a website that showed that George Jr.’s vaccine batch was “toxic,” a claim that was based on misleading data. Soon he learned a lot more about Covid-19 conspiracy theories.

His wife, Kathy, shared a TikTok video with him claiming that Covid-19 is caused by snake venom — a conspiracy theory that was gaining popularity at the time.

“It affects the heart,” he said in an interview with The New York Times last year at a hotel restaurant in Elmira, near the prison where he works as a guard. “And then they put it in the vaccines and they’re putting it in water you drink.”

He also heard that hospitals were trying to euthanize Covid-19 patients by putting them on ventilators.

“Do I believe that? I don’t know,” he said. “You don’t know what to believe anymore.”

Doctors Raise Doubts

As claims about George Jr.’s death spread online, they made their way into the medical community and provoked questions among doctors who doubted the simple explanation offered by the medical examiner.

What stood out to several doctors was what happened in the rest of George Jr.’s body. Some said it raised more questions about his cause of death.

When George Jr.’s spleen was removed during autopsy, the medical examiner found it remarkably enlarged. It weighed 1,350 grams. A typical spleen weighs around 200 grams. This can happen if the body is showing symptoms of heart failure for months. But the examiner gave no explanation.

His kidney was also damaged, showing both inflammation and dead tissue. His lungs showed late-stage pneumonia. His brain showed chronic inflammation.

Autopsy tools at the Bradford County morgue in Wysox, Pa.

 

“It’s like the whole immune system was just revved up everywhere,” said Dr. James Gill, the chief medical examiner for Connecticut and former president of the National Association of Medical Examiners, who wrote a paper exploring two other deaths he linked to Covid-19 vaccine-related myocarditis and reviewed details about the case.

Even more alarming was the condition of George Jr.’s prostate gland, which was yellow in places and partially necrotic, meaning partially dead. That could explain the blood found in his urine during his emergency room visits.

Dr. Elizabeth Murray, a pediatrician from nearby Rochester who heard George Jr.’s story circulating in the local medical community, was skeptical about the medical examiner’s conclusions. If he “is going to say myocarditis due to the vaccine, then why isn’t he also saying kidney damage due to the vaccine? And lung damage and brain damage and prostate damage due to the vaccine?” she said. “None of that was listed.”

The Lourdes Hospital medical examiner’s office said it did not comment on cases. Since the C.D.C. has not publicized any details of George Jr.’s case, the coroner’s report and autopsy records are the best synopsis of his case.

“I would have no problem putting myocarditis on the death certificate as the cause of death,” said Dr. Mary Jumbelic, a retired forensic pathologist and former chief medical examiner of Onondaga County, N.Y., who agreed to review details about the case. “But the leap here is the conclusion that it’s vaccine-related.”

The report being prepared by the C.D.C. could shed more light on George Jr.’s death. If they agree with the medical examiner, George Jr.’s death could become the first that the department has tied to vaccine-related myocarditis in the United States. If they disagree, it could offer more clarity about what happened to George Jr.

George Sr. said he would find no comfort in any new details that would point to causes other than the vaccine.

“I still got the reports that tell otherwise,” he said. “They’re not going to come knock on my door and try to take it from me. I won’t let that happen.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/technology/covid-anti-vaccine.html

In Your Face -- Outright Fraud!

 

The Rambam famously held that sorcery was mere deception, which the Torah forbids in order
to keep the Jewish people from foolishness. He wrote – All these matters are lies and deception that the original idolaters used to fool the non-Jewish nations to follow after them. It is not fitting for Israel, who are wise Sages, to be drawn after this nonsense, nor to imagine that there is any benefit to them.Whoever believes in these types of practices and considers that they are true and wise, but theTorah simply forbade them, is foolish and lacking intelligence. (Hilchot Avoda Zara 11:16). As certain as the Rambam was in stating his position, he was virtually the only
one among the great Sages throughout the generations to deny any truth or reality to these forbidden spiritual practices.

READ:

https://jewishclarity.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Segulot-Parts1-6.pdf

Da'as Torah May Not Be the Answer: But What is the Question?

 The Totality Of The Abuse of  Power - A Brief History - IGNORANCE! 

 

 

On Friday March 13, 2020, as the coronavirus was beginning to ravage Israel’s Haredi community, R. Hayyim Kanievsky, the 92-year old acknowledged leader of the so-called Lithuanian Haredim, issued an open letter “Regarding the concern of transmission of the Corona Virus Pandemic.” “Everyone,” he wrote, “must be mechazek [strengthen themselves] to refrain from Lashon Harah [gossip] and rechilus [slander] as it states in [Talmud] Arachin 15b…They must further strengthen themselves in the midah [attribute] of humility and to be maavir al midosav [let matters pass, that is, not take umbrage] as the pirush  haRosh [commentary of the Rosh] on the side of the page says explicitly in the end of [Talmud]Horios…And the merit of one who strengthens himself in these prescriptions will protect him and his family members so that not one of them will become ill.” [i] He said nothing about social distancing, or any other orders that might have emanated from the medical community.

The following night, Motzei Shabbat March 14, Rav Kanievsky’s grandson asked his grandfather (in Hebrew) whether Cheders (elementary schools) and Yeshivot should remain open. The grandson said that the “Medineh,” that is, the Israeli government, was warning that schools should remain closed until there was a way to deal with what he called the mageifeh   (plague). R. Kanievsky, mumbled something that was not entirely audible. The grandson then said, “so the cheders should remain open?” and R. Kanievsky nodded his assent. The grandson then followed up with “and the yeshivot should remain open too?” Again the Rav agreed. The grandson never mentioned medical advice, and the rabbi never asked.

Despite personal pleas the next day from top police officials, who did refer to medical opinion,  R. Kanievsky, together with R. Gershon Edelstein, the Rosh Yeshiva (Dean) of the famed Ponevezh yeshiva in Bnai Beraq and chairman of Aguda’s Mo’etzses Gedolei Hatorah (Council of Torah Greats) issued an open letter that called for Haredi schools at all levels to remain open though it did acknowledge the need for certain precautions. The letter began with a clarion call that no Haredi was likely to ignore:

“In a time when we are in grave need of great heavenly mercy to maintain the health of our nation, certainly it is proper to strengthen ourselves in the study of Torah, to be careful in committing slander (Lashon HaRah and Rechilus), and to strengthen ourselves in humility and to judge everyone favorably….Our sages have already stated (Yuma 28b), “Since the days of our forefathers, the Yeshivos have never ceased [to be active] from them.  They further stated (Shabbos 119b):  The world only exists on account of the sounds of children in the house of their Rebbe [yeshivos].  They are the greatest insurance possible that the destroyer not enter into the homes of Israel [my emphasis].”

The letter then made some allowances for the reality of the epidemic, calling for schools and yeshivot to split up students; ensure “that there is adequate space between person [social distancing – recommended at 2 meters” and that “classrooms and Batei Midrashim [study halls] be properly ventilated; and to appoint supervisors [Mashgichim] to maintain the proper level of cleanliness as a health necessity.” It also called upon educators to ensure that no one who was meant to be under quarantine, or had a family member under quarantine, was to enter the Beit Midrash.

The two rabbinical leaders then observed that “This is all from the perspective of an understood precondition to the action [of attending school or Yeshiva]. The Roshei Yeshiva [Deans] and the administrators of the Talmud Torahs (and Yeshivos) must be on guard to ensure compliance.” The letter did not specify whether “compliance” meant compliance with health regulations, or compliance with the directive to keep the yeshivot open. The letter then concluded with the admonition that “we must have faith in the Holy One Blessed Be He who watches over all His creations, and no man is stricken by a calamity if it was not decreed from Above.  And may the merit of Torah and all that strengthen us stand for us as protection and salvation.”[ii]

The letter prompted a major outcry over the danger into which the aged rabbi and his Ponevezh colleague had placed youngsters and their families and led to his reversal two weeks later. By then, however, considerable damage may have been done. Though it was unknown, indeed unknowable to what extent his ruling resulted in more coronavirus carriers and more Covid-19 deaths in Bnai Beraq, Jerusalem’s Haredi neighborhoods, and other Haredi enclaves such as Beitar Ilit, there was little doubt that the letter had added to the roster of both carriers and death.

It was also reported that Kupat Ha’ir, a charity based in Bnai Beraq that raises funds by offering to have young Haredi scholars pray at the kotel for all sorts of personal requests made by the donors, was advertising, in R. Kanievsky’s name, that donors who paid the shekel equivalent of $836 would “enjoy immunity from the coronavirus for themselves and their families.”[iii] This appeal for funds simply reinforced the intent of R. Kanievsky’s original edict of 13 March.

On April 20, shortly after the conclusion of Pesach, it was reported that R. Kanievsky had ordered the schools and yeshivot once again to open their doors but that R. Edelstein had put a hold on its publication. The latter denied that was the case, however, and instead, the two rabbis issued a second letter that revealed their impatience, warning that  if there will not be a response [to reopen the Yeshivot] and the foot dragging continues without real progress, the great Torah sages [of Agudah] will consider drastic action.”[iv]

Meanwhile the virus continued to rage in Israel generally, and among the Haredim in particular. Though Haredim accounted for perhaps 12 percent of the Israeli population, it was estimated that they accounted for as much as 50 percent of all hospital beds in the country. No wonder that R. Kanievsky’s edicts in response to the country’s health crisis prompted outrage among Israel’s non-Haredi elements.

At long last, in recognition of the depth of the crisis confronting the Haredi community no less than the entire Israeli population, the two rabbinic leaders, acting with the government’s consent, appointed a special task force consisting of  two younger rabbinic leaders, R. Shraga Shteinman, son of R. Kanievsky’s predecessor as leader of the “Lithuanian” Haredim, R. Aryeh Lev Shteinman (and R. Kanievsky’s son-in-law), and R. Baruch Dov Diskin, scion of another leading Haredi rabbinic family, together with Dr. Meshulam Hirt, “the Gedolim’s physician,” to examine ways to reopen schools in compliance with government directives. The task force issued its initial guidance on May 3, recommending that higher elementary grades and above could reopen under strict conditions mandated by the government. R. Kanievsky endorsed the task force recommendations.

For Haredim, Rav Kanievsky’s views were not merely the opinions of a wise leader. They were Da’as Torah[v] and thus had the imprimatur of the Divine.[vi] At a minimum, it was asserted in some quarters that if the rabbi had erred—and no one would dare say that he had—it was because he was so enmeshed in his studies that he did not fully realize the extent of the threat that the virus posed to Israeli society.

The problem, however, was not with R. Kanievsky’s initial responses. It was with the way the matter had been put to him.

Haredim and “The Medinah”

After 72 years of existence as a state, a consequential portion of the Haredi community has yet to recognize the reality of what they term “the Medinah.” Nothing has changed since 1912, when Yaakov Rosenheim convened the first Agudas Yisrael conference in Kattowitz (Katowice), then part of Germany, in no small part as a reaction to a decision by the Tenth Zionist Congress not to fund religious schools. Rosenheim envisaged Agudah as an umbrella organization for all religious Jews. While he never fully realized his dream, the organization did emerge as a major locus for opposition to Zionism. Not coincidentally, Da’as Torah also became enshrined in the Agudas Yisrael platform. Indeed, Agudah created a Council of Torah Giants (Mo’etses Gedolei HaTorah), whose pronouncements on all matters, whether Halachic or secular, were treated as authoritative and binding upon all religious Jews. And the Council was overwhelmingly anti-Zionist.

During the First World War, when Germany occupied parts of Russian Poland, leading German rabbis, notably Rabbi Dr. Emmanuel Carlebach, coordinated their activities with the Gerer Rebbe, Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter, one of the most prominent Hasidic leaders. Like the German rabbis, and indeed, Hasidic admorim (Grand Rabbis) of all stripes, R. Alter was hostile not only to secular Zionism, but also to religious Zionism, which was organized under the umbrella of the Mizrahi movement.

The Agudah leadership allied itself with the representatives of the so-called “Old Yishuv,” the long-standing Haredi community of Palestine, most of whose members resided in the older districts of Jerusalem and Tsefat. These Jews were violently opposed to the influx of Zionist settlers into what after 1918 became a British mandate. Not surprisingly, the Agudah leadership aligned itself with the leaders of the Old Yishuv who in 1937 testified before the British Peel Commission in opposition to the creation of a Jewish State.

Needless to say, Agudah invoked Da’as Torah in its opposition to Zionism and the notion of a Jewish State. In so doing, it was claiming heavenly support for what was essentially a political position. This was  consistent with the view, articulated by R. Yisroel Meir Kagan, best known as  Hofetz Hayyim, and subsequent rabbinic leaders such as  the late Rosh Yeshiva of the Mirer yeshiva, R. Nosson Zvi Finkel that Da’as Torah was as binding with respect to non-Halakhic matters as to Halakhic ones. As R. Finkel put it, “when a great man offers either advice or a ruling, Emunas Hakhamim [belief in the Sages][vii] mandates that one can neither hesitate nor doubt. This is Da’as Torah and this is how it should be.”[viii]

Agudah had no choice but to come to terms with the Jewish state once its leaders declared its independence in 1948. There was a sense among Haredim, as among some secular Jews, however, that the State would not survive more than a decade or at most fifteen years,[ix] but for the moment, Agudah felt it had no choice but to transform itself into an Israeli political party. Nevertheless, in so doing it did not relinquish its refusal to come to terms with the secular state. It refused to join government coalitions, or to allow its representatives to hold ministerial posts, though through a sleight-of-hand ruling, the Council of Torah Greats permitted Agudah’s representatives in the Knesset to serve as Deputy Ministers. These men often acted as de facto ministers, and in some “emergency” cases, held full ministerial portfolios.

Agudah’s participation in Israeli political affairs did not extend to other aspects of Israeli society, however, particularly army service. The Haredi leadership viewed the army’s secular, assimilationist orientation as the leading threat both to its values and to its control of the community. Thanks to an agreement between Agudah’s acknowledged leader, R. Abraham Isaiah Karelitz, popularly known by the title of his works as Hazon Ish, and Prime Minister David Ben Gurion , yeshiva students were exempted from service in the Israeli Defense Forces. The agreement enabled Haredi leaders to maintain at least some semblance of a wall between their adherents and the rest of Israeli society, and to underscore their fundamental and principled opposition to what they termed “the Medinah.” It is in the context of this opposition that R. Kanievsky’s edict must be seen.

The Mantle of Haredi Leadership

Not all Haredim are anti-Zionist. In 1984 the great Sephardi leader R. Ovadia Yosef led his followers out of the main Ashkenazi Haredi political parties, and created the Shas Party with its own Council of Torah Sages (Motetset Hakhmei HaTorah). Shas displayed a more sympathetic attitude toward the state, including having its Knesset members serve as full ministers in the government.

Even among Ashkenazi Haredim, however, there is no common stance vis a vis “the Medineh.”  Although they share a common antipathy to Zionism, Haredi leadership is not vested solely in Agudah’s Council of Torah Greats. In particular, the Eidah Haredis, successors to the Old Yishuv, is far more vociferously, and far too often violently, opposed to the Jewish State. Moreover, whereas the majority of Haredi yeshivot do not hesitate to receive financial support from the State’s coffers, some –such as the Brisker yeshiva, following the leadership of its late dean, R. Yosef Zev Soloveichik—refuse to take any state funds. Nevertheless, whatever their differences, the vast majority of Ashkenazim look to a single leader for guidance, Da’as Torah, on major political and social issues.  Until his passing, Hazon Ish was that leader.

Hazon Ish rose to his position of prominence on the passing in 1940 of his brother-in-law, R. Hayyim Ozer Grodzinski, who had in turn succeeded Hofetz Hayyim as the acknowledged leader of the Lithuanian Haredi world. Familial ties among the Lithuanian Haredi leadership continue to this day: R. Kanievsky was not only a student of the Hazon Ish, but also his nephew.  And, as has been noted, R. Shraga Shteinmann, whom R. Kanievsky appointed to the coronavirus task force, is the latter’s son-in-law.

 At 93, R. Kanievsky represents the tendency of the Lithuanian Haredim to recognize as supreme leaders of the movement nonogenarians or even centenarians. Thus, R. Kanievski’s predecessor, R. Aryeh Yehuda Leib Shteinman was niftar (passed away) in 2017 at the age of 103, while his own predecessor, R. Sholom Yisef Elyashiv died at the age of 102. R. Elyashiv’s predecessor, R. Elazar Menachem Man Shach, likewise was 102 when he was niftar.

Is the problem the answer, the question, or the system?

The Torah teaches that Moses was as much in control of all his faculties on the day he died at the age of 120, as when he was a much younger man. That is not necessarily the case with other older persons, even if they are great scholars. It is arguable that by the time they reach their nineties, even leading Halakhic experts may have lost half a mental step. They might comprehend what is being asked of them, indeed, their replies may reflect their decades of Torah knowledge. Nevertheless, they may not have the mental acuity to probe all facets of whatever issue is brought before them, as they may have been able to do as recently as a decade earlier.

It is well known that Haredi leaders surround themselves—or are surrounded by—men who are collectively known as askanim. In the words of R. David Stav, leader of the moderate Orthodox Tzohar movement, askanim are “a small group of Haredi askanim who, because of their own personal interests, make Judaism and Haredi society hateful to Israelis." [x] R. Dov Lipman, an American-born moderate Haredi who served for a period as a Knesset member, outlined the power of these men:

“The issue of the gedolim Torah greats] is very largely the askanim who surround them…Askanim are the community activists and assistants who normally surround the leading rabbis and act as a buffer between them and the communities they lead. They [Torah greats] are totally controlled by people around them and that’s the biggest problem….[xi]”

These askanim clearly take advantage of elderly rabbis, putting questions to them in much the same way as pollsters with a particular political bias will put questions to their respondents. Not surprisingly, manipulative questioners will elicit pronouncements that are in line with what they want to hear. And since those pronouncements have the force of unchallengeable law for the Haredi community, they are in effect empowering their questioners to ride roughshod over that community.

This appears to have been the case when R. Kanievsky’s grandson, with one of the askanim standing over his shoulder, asked his grandfather whether yeshivot and elementary cheders should remain open. He did not explain clearly that not just the “Medineh,” but doctors had argued for such closures. Had he done so, R. Kanievsky would immediately have recognized that the issue was one of pikuach nefesh, saving lives. Without a doubt, had R. Kanievsky been asked whether schools should be closed to save lives, his answer would have been in the affirmative. After all, Halakha is unambiguous with respect to this issue; indeed, Halakha posits that even the remote possibility of life being endangered justifies violating the Torah.[xii] Indeed, once R. Kanievsky fully fathomed the severity of the crisis, he did call upon a trusted doctor, along with respected Haredi rabbis, to devise an approach that satisfied both the requirement to maintain safety and the objective of studying Torah. It was the word “Medineh” that had acted as a red flag to the aged rabbi and prompted his initial response.

The Challenge for the Haredi world

Modern Orthodox Jews do not recognize Da’as Torah outside the bounds of Halakha. They look to specialists, for example in the military or medical realms, for guidance on purely secular issues. They justify their attitude both because rabbinic greats ranging from R. Joseph B. Soloveichik to R. Ovadia  Yosef took this view, and because Da’as Torah has been on the wrong side of Jewish history in multiple occasions, failing the Jewish people at critical times in the recent past. These include opposing immigration to America or Israel when it was still possible before the invasion of Poland; opposition to the creation of the State of Israel; and opposition to public demonstrations to free Soviet Jewry. For the Modern Orthodox, therefore, Haredi rulings concerning responses to the coronavirus epidemic had little impact.

Moreover, not all Haredi leaders are as closed to the outside world, and therefore as vulnerable to askanim. The recently departed Novominsker Rebbe, R.  Yaakov Perlow, who died due to the coronavirus, graduated with honors from Brooklyn College![xiii] A group of Hasidic admorim and rabbonim residing in Boro Park, Brooklyn and led by R. Perlow, issued a proclamation on the eve of Pesach outlining the importance of maintaining government restrictions even at the cost of hallowed Passover traditions.

On the other hand, as noted at the outset of this essay, contrary pronouncements by Haredi rabbinic leaders have had a devastating effect on the community. Indeed, the outsized impact of the coronavirus on the Haredi population has affected all Israelis, since Haredim occupy a disproportionate percentage of hospital beds. The community, whether in Israel, the United States or elsewhere therefore needs to re-evaluate how to structure its leadership. In particular, if it will continue to treat the words of aged leaders as inviolable law it must take steps to rid itself of the scourge of askanim. The lesson of Israel’s hospital bed crisis is that doing so not only will enhance the welfare of Haredim, but will also redound to the benefit of the Jewish community as a whole.

 

https://www.jewishideas.org/article/daas-torah-may-not-be-answer-what-question