This approach was all the more curious considering that less than a year prior when at the Agudah Convention, leading Agudah rabbis were asked about the rise in anti-Semitism; they knew exactly who the culprits for anti-Semitism in America were: Jerry Nadler, Adam Schiff, and Chuck Schumer of course. The good rabbi went on to point out these were all Jewish politicians who had the Chutzpah to engage in the impeachment of the President of the United States.

American Orthodoxy’s political suicide 

 

Here's how the community sabotaged its own political interests and reached a point when mask-burning and death-threats were somehow acceptable.

The great writer Aaron Sorkin wrote: “decisions are made by those who show up.” Sadly, if there’s anything the American Orthodox community has done over this past year, it has been to show up in all the wrong places. The terrifying scenes of bonafide Nazis, KKK members, and anarchists running over Capitol Hill, staging an insurgency against the United States of America, and the assault on the heart of America, have terrified Americans and people all around the globe.

 The scenes of Orthodox Jews among those thugs is the logical conclusion of what has happened in our community over the past four years. If this does not bother you on a moral level, let it be clear: American Orthodoxy has now successfully and deservingly earned itself political irrelevance. This irrelevance was hard-earned and will leave its impact for years to come.

On January 20th President-Elect Joe Biden will be sworn into office with a majority Democratic Congress and Senate. New York State Assembly is now held by a supermajority of Democrats, predominantly progressive, and, yes, the vast majority of Orthodox Jews live in blue states. The hard work of so many individuals and organizations have earned us the right to perhaps beg for their mercy if we need something, not much more. Destroying years’ worth of political capital and inflicting great damage on American support for the Jewish community and for Israel, individuals and organizations will have a lot of time to think about this demolition.

While it is hard to know where to begin with this political autopsy, I will attempt to do so here:

City and state level. More than 1.1 million Jews live in New York City alone. Many more live in New York State. The decision of so many Orthodox Jews and organizations to confront the governor, the mayor, public health officials, and the NYPD yielded little fruit and huge damage. With more than 100,000 Jewish yeshiva students in NYC alone and a governor who allocated more funding for Jewish institutions than any governor before him, one would think that the bull in the china shop would be slightly less aggressive. The Agudath Israel of America decided to sue the Governor, something I cannot imagine he appreciated.

Then came the infamous mask burnings in Boro Park, the beating and lynching of those who dissented, the Trump flags, and the exotic appearance of the Heschy Tishlers of the world with their color and gravitas, using graphic profanities against the mayor’s wife. Not only did these images deal a devastating blow to the standing of Jews in New York City and State; they were also projected around the world. TV stations from France, Russia, and many other countries gave prime time coverage to the mask burning, vulgarity slinging individuals in Boro Park, with unlikely feelings of sympathy for the damage it would inflict on the image of Jews around the world. Tweets of sympathy from recognized figures like Mark Levine, Rush Limbaugh, or Ted Cruz can feel great to a small community; they won’t fund our day schools, synagogue security, or help us solve the myriad issues that need to be solved locally.

In Congress- Let us start with the simple fact that 80% of congressional seats are decided during the primaries and that most Orthodox Jews live in heavily Democratic areas. Jews often have a huge opportunity to make their vote count in who the candidate is, while their vote in the actual outcome of the race has far fewer implications. Overall, Orthodox Jews who have historically registered as Democrats have a strong voice in primaries. This year, Jews in many blue areas opted out of the Democratic Party, disempowering themselves and making their votes significantly less effective.

This was most evident in Riverdale, where longtime congressman Elliot Engel, a Democrat who was also chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a true friend of Israel, lost his primary 55% to 40% to progressive Jamaal Bowman. This surprised many, especially as thousands of Orthodox Jews live in the area and should have been able to come through and vote for Engel. When Engel lost, I asked a friend who lives in the district if he voted, and he said no. He had registered as a Republican. His vote in the Republican primary in his area is as effective as his vote for the Narnia presidency, and the lack of his vote has dealt a huge blow to Israel.

Then came the Federal level. Whether you support it or not, the religious fervor for former president Trump in the Orthodox community is unprecedented and unparalleled. Never in the history of Orthodox Jews in the United States has the community bet all of its chips and shown all of its support in such a one-sided way. Gone was the traditional wisdom and recognition that in elections, there are winners and losers or the notion that putting all eggs in one basket might not be smart.

Much has been said about the unprecedented religious fervor for candidate Trump. All I can add to that in retrospect is that we now know it was a losing bet. From the dozens of Brooklyn lay leaders who chose to pay $12,000 a plate to have dinner with someone who would be out of office in less than a year, to the leading rabbis’ “unprecedented” letter of support”—it was all a losing bet. Mazal tov.

Next time the Agudath Israel of America wants to meet with members of government claiming they are a non-partisan religious group, they may have to explain why they chose to write a letter to Mitch McConnell supporting the nomination of Amy Coney Barret to the Supreme Court. It is unlikely that Mitch McConnel ever saw the letter they sent. More likely is that other city and state officials whose help our community really needs did see it. This was yet another example of us better our political fortunes for no apparent gain.

The destruction of our ability to respond to anti-Semitism- While the rabbis and Jews in every generation understood that the way we behave as a community can have an impact on the way we are treated and thus made leniencies in halacha with the logic of mipnei darkei shalom or mishum eivah (for the ways of peace or for the concern of being targeted), anti-lockdown Brooklyn was going to have none of it. They wanted full equality. They wanted to be able to burn masks in the streets, sue Governor Cuomo, violate city and health regulations, and to be treated with all fairness. “Why can they loot and riot and we can’t do this?!”, came the question our parents and grandparents would never dream of asking. Previous generations all knew if you are Jewish, you must behave with extra courtesy wherever we are. Here we had a generation of young Jews who sought the ideal equilibrium between how to maximize bad behavior while expecting zero negative impact on our community. For the most part, they did this with little protest from rabbis and community leaders. This was the tone that dominated Orthodox publications and public figures.

This approach was all the more curious considering that less than a year prior when at the Agudah Convention, leading Agudah rabbis were asked about the rise in anti-Semitism; they knew exactly who the culprits for anti-Semitism in America were: Jerry Nadler, Adam Schiff, and Chuck Schumer of course. The good rabbi went on to point out these were all Jewish politicians who had the Chutzpah to engage in the impeachment of the President of the United States. Do they not know we are in Golus?!

This did not seem to explain why a week later, a member of the Black Hebrews Church went into a synagogue in Monsey and stabbed Hassidic Jews; they knew liberal Jews brought it on ourselves. A few months later this sense of personal responsibility seemed to have disappeared. This anecdote highlights how deeply partisanship blindness has seeped into our community, destroying our ability to see Antisemitism for what it is and spelling disaster for our ability to confront it.

Then came the medical community—a physician in the field of critical care lamented to me not long ago: “how can people who ask me to do a surgery on their 90-year-old, braindead relative with stage three cancer not be willing to wear a mask to save lives?” I do not have an answer for him. The voice of religion is one that is often invoked in the field of medicine, and rightfully so. Religion sanctifies life, which is why it has such a respected voice in the field of medical ethics, beginning, and end of life, and other related matters. The conduct of the Orthodox community during this pandemic, including its role and championing of SCOTUS decision, is likely to make its voice far less respected in the medical community. As of now, more than 3,500 people are dying from COVID every day. 

To be the culprits in tying the hands of public health officials during this time and then advocate against the medical community’s standards of end-of-life care evokes a mixture of irony and tears. If we end up finding out our community members are dying at equal rates to those who go to hair salons at least we will know we earned that equality ourselves.

Turning on one another. With all of its imperfections, the most beautiful thing about the American Jewish community has been our ability to stand together and support one another. All that changed in the past year. Suddenly political affiliations superseded our longstanding bond with each other. We saw on the streets of Boro Park those who dissented get beaten and receive death threats. The minority of the Orthodox community that did not share the political views of the vast majority found themselves on the outs in the best case or actively being threatened in other cases.

My friend Rabbi Barry Kornblau, a longstanding member and leader in the Rabbinical Council of America and rabbi in Queens, wrote an opinion piece arguing in favor of candidate Joe Biden. The response he got? Death threats, denigration, and violent rhetoric. My dear friend Jake Adler, a yeshiva graduate who worked for years successfully advocating for millions of dollars for Jewish day schools got a job as Governor Cuomo’s liaison to the Orthodox community. His reward? Relentless attacks on social media, and Orthodox Jews trying to hurt him professionally. This vile behavior is unprecedented in the history of American Jewry. My friend Rabbi Ben Kelsen, a black-hatted Orthodox rabbi in Teaneck, has worked on former President Obama’s team and now on president Biden’s team and lives in Teaneck Bergenfield. His reward for trying to advocate for the community? Being called a Kapo when leaving the house with his kids. While these examples are individual, they are not the only ones.

Should there be another rise in anti-Semitism on the streets of Orthodox neighborhoods as we saw a year ago and the Orthodox community would like to build a broad coalition against it, other Jews might want to know why the Orthodox community was largely absent from the No Hate, No Fear solidarity march on the Brooklyn bridge. This rally was organized largely to support the Orthodox community, which was facing daily violent attacks, yet most of those same Jews ignored this rally. At this rally I met Jews from Ohio and Florida who came in to support their Orthodox brethren, yet those could not make the ten-minute car ride to the rally.

Progressive Jews may also wonder why it is that when 400 (mostly non-Orthodox) rabbis signed a letter expressing grave concern for matters of life and death during the pandemic of a generation, supporting public health officials, they were attacked in response. Agudah spokesperson Avi Shafran thought that pointing out his righteous abstinence from using Zoom on Shabbat as addressing the broader community’s concern for matters of life and death. Perhaps he thought it was amusing; others saw it as a mockery of concern for life and death and an inability for shared dialogue on existential issues.

Members of the Orthodox community who didn’t align their belief with the Trump trend were made to feel again and again that they do not belong. A community that prided itself so much on its faith now placed another precondition for joining: political alliance to now-former president Trump. This kind of blind loyalty to political idols over human decency and in violation to Jews’ historic commitment to one another is a low American Jewry has never seen. The community has now succumbed to the ultimate destroyer of Jewish communities throughout history: it became deeply fractured from within. The consequences of a divided community are both moral and pragmatic. Fractured communities are less capable of thriving, growing, and representing themselves to the outside world.

Courts– while there is no question that religious communities are likely to gain more sympathy in the now conservative SCOTUS and other courts, that sympathy did not have to come at the cost of our voice in the political system and elsewhere. Furthermore, the Supreme Court does not pass budgets, build communities, and support day schools. Sure, the courts do have great powers, but judging by the number of Orthodox Jews moving to Kentucky, Alabama, and Mississippi, our communities depend on more than just a vacuum and neutral space for religion. The Agudah may see their future spent in the court halls and offices of big law firms, something which may surely yield some results, but it will not relocate where most Orthodox Jews live.

Finally, I do not believe it is over – or close to over – for a proud and impactful Orthodox community. However, in order to move forward from its current state, all Orthodox Jews need to think hard about the following questions:

Is there room for those with different political opinions in our community? When we engage in Kiruv and outreach, will we be telling people that not only do they need to keep Shabbat and Kosher but that they also need to be Republicans? What kind of space will there be in our communities for those who openly express different political options?

Rabbis, leaders, and laypeople will need to ask themselves what they are doing to make sure their communities are synagogues and yeshivas and not just a Jewish version of Liberty University. Communities will need to think really hard if they are driving away those with different politics and if that exclusion is forgivable from a religious perspective.

Those who purport to vote Republican because it is the “pro-Israel” party will need to ask: is this support because of Israel or is it similar to the fact that in Hassidic New Square, 2,973 people cast their votes for Trump and 6 to Biden or that in Satmar’s Kiryas Joel 6,159 voted from Trump and just 72 voted Biden. I do not judge anyone for voting one way or the other, but when you say you are the “pro-Israel voter,” or when you shame those who vote for pro-Israel candidates in the Democratic Party when in fact, they are the ones working hard to assure support for Israel, that is an entirely different issue.

Just a year ago, Yisroel Besser wrote very wisely in Mishpacha Magazine an article about hosting non-Orthodox college students for a Shabbos meal and how they were turned off when they realized what his political positions are. He went on to advocate for a more politic-free Orthodoxy:

“These students searching for truth heard only about Trump. They missed the power of Kiddush, missed noticing the way a frum couple speaks to each other, didn’t perceive the unique dynamic of children who sit around a table and connect as a family, week after week.

I had blown it by bringing Trump to the Shabbos table.

I feel like many of us have fallen into the same Trump trap as the rest of America, forced to take one side or another. But we’re not politicians, so why go there at all? We all believe the same things, more or less. We all believe HaKadosh Baruch Hu put the man in power. So why shrink ourselves and all we have into the same little world where we check off boxes — are we Fox people or CNN people?

We’re neither.”

While the message seems to have eluded its author, the publication, and its audience in the months to come, it remains true. An Orthodoxy that is toxically political is likely to turn off many – inside and outside its ranks. The beauty of Judaism, our ability to communicate it to others, and our ability to represent ourselves to the outside world as standing for a higher value, will be severely damaged if we continue down this path.

That does not mean we should not be politically active. It does not mean it should be impossible for the vast majority of us to vote one way or the other. It does mean that our public sphere needs to be what it used to be – a Mikdash Me’at, conducted with wisdom and prudence even during challenging times. The work towards this goal needs to come from each and every one of us, from rabanim, leaders of organizations, and publishers of frum weeklies who have taken an increasingly political role steering a community towards consequences editors and writers may not have to bear, but others will. Let us begin the process of healing our community.

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/american-orthodoxys-political-suicide/?fbclid=IwAR2UFn7Aagjrh6RZLUuvE3KMuzhu8PeEaFl_UHfky5j8Hw3Y7fZ-TBNch_o

 

To call Donald Trump a con artist is an insult to artists. He’s a con man, who has spent his entire life conning many men and women into believing he’s a winner when he’s the ultimate loser. He’s a hyena preying on the weak and downtrodden while others in stronger positions think they’re preying on him, but the joke is on them. Because who wants to eat a hyena?

 

A Coup of the Soul

 

Donald Trump ends not with a bang… actually, with a bang

 

What a day. Just when we think we’ve cleared the latest hurdle after a year of hurdles, one more appears. This time, a brand new and particularly high one. One that would have seemed unimaginable save for maybe a couple hundred years ago. When people rode in carriages and went to war with muskets. An angry mob storming the U.S. Capitol Building. In 2021.

I would say it’s surreal, but 2020 gave a new definition to surreal. We’re still in the middle of a pandemic which has us mainly locked in our homes. It’s more exhausting than anything else at this point, to be honest. It’s another moment that feels like we’re living in some shitty B-movie, not living life.

Yet this latest insanity also isn’t all that surprising if you’ve been paying attention. I’d say “I hate to say I told you so” but I don’t hate saying it, I just hate that you didn’t listen. I used to write down my thoughts about Donald Trump more often, but it got too depressing because it was clear the path we were going down. Which is: the path of learning the hard way.

The only thing I got wrong was not recognizing that “the hard way” would be established and redefined a half dozen times in one term. And I want to say that today is the cherry on top — but we still have 13 days to go.

To call Donald Trump a con artist is an insult to artists. He’s a con man, who has spent his entire life conning many men and women into believing he’s a winner when he’s the ultimate loser. He’s a hyena preying on the weak and downtrodden while others in stronger positions think they’re preying on him, but the joke is on them. Because who wants to eat a hyena?

He’s the ultimate narcissist with absolutely no shame, no taste, and no tact. And today ensures that he will go down as the worst President in American history. And that several people who aligned with him for political reasons will go down in flames, in the long run.

At the same time, he’s really just a personification of a problem. The problem is less about Trump, who is but one man, but rather the 70+ million people who voted for him. I spoke of a lesson we were going to have to learn. We had four years to learn it, and did not — in fact, many learned the opposite lesson. And while I want to believe that today will be different, the reality is that it will also likely push the two sides farther apart.

We have a lot of Republicans in positions of power finally saying the right things about Trump tonight, but that doesn’t really matter. They were all the camp that was attempting to use him for their means, from Mitch McConnell on down. And now that McConnell got what he wanted — three Supreme Court justices (!), not to mention countless other judges and appointments — he’s happy to break back to reality, of course. As are most others who tried to get something from Trump and either did or got played by the con man. They all sold their souls. History will collect the debt, but they’ll all be dead when it does.

And again, they don’t even really matter. It’s those 70+ million people who are not in on the con. They’ll say they are because they think they are, but they’re not. And the sad — honestly sad — thing is that they won’t realize the reality until it’s far too late. Until their lives never improve. As they’re lying on their deathbeds wondering why things never got better.

This is harsh. But it is reality. Reality is harsh. And the other reality is that I’m not sure how much Trump, the person, matters to many of these people. Again, he’s the personification of something. A symbol at best. An excuse at worst. Lonely? Sick? Tired? Bored? Join the movement.

And some of them will think, “yeah, but it’s not like it would have gotten better with the other guys” and they won’t be wrong. But society as a whole would have been better without Trump. Fewer people would have died in our pandemic with actual leadership. Etc. Etc. Etc. But that is a very hard argument to make, I recognize. It’s a plea for the greater good when the burden of failure in our era is on an individual level.

And so those of us in a relative position of luxury learn the hard lessons from Trump. While others learn the wrong lessons. The lesson that nothing is true if you just refuse to acknowledge it. That lies are true if repeated enough. That you too can con your way to the top. But you can’t. And that’s a good thing. Because it means you’re not as immoral and narcissistic as Donald Trump. The ultimate con man. Who became President.

A President who incited insurrection today. Who should be thrown out of the White House. But won’t be because it’s far easier to run out the clock. Yet another insanely dangerous precedent set in a Presidency of dangerous precedents. And because everyone must quote Abraham Lincoln:

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”

Of course, he may not have actually said this. We’ll ignore that.

Written by

M.G. Siegler

Writer turned investor turned investor who writes. General Partner at GV. Writer at 500ish. I write to think. 🍻

The Mr. Ed From Ukraine - A Horse Is A Horse, Of Course, Of Course! You've never heard of a talking horse? Well, listen to this...

 

One of Ukraine’s chief rabbis endorses siege of US Capitol by Trump supporters

Moshe Azman — whose claim to title of head rabbi is disputed — compares violent run on heart of US democracy to recent ‘Maidan’ uprising against pro-Russia government in Ukraine

 

"Hello, I'm Mister Ed"
A horse is a horse of course of course
And no one can talk to a horse of course.
That is of course unless the horse
Is the famous Mister Ed!

Go right to the source and ask the horse.
He'll give you the answer that you'll endorse
He's always on a steady course.
Talk to Mister Ed!

People yakkity-yak a streak
And waste your time of day,
but Mister Ed will never speak
Unless he has something to say!

A horse is a horse of course of course
And this one'll talk 'til his voice is hoarse.
You've never heard of a talking horse?
Well, listen to this...

"I am Mister Ed!"

https://youtu.be/xZJrQI1hLZo

 

Rabbi Moshe Azman, founder of the Anatevka community

 

JTA — Rabbi Moshe Azman, a prominent Ukrainian cleric with ties to several of US President Donald Trump’s associates at the heart of last year’s Ukrainegate scandal, endorsed Wednesday’s violent attempt to prevent the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s election win, comparing the clashes to his own country’s recent pro-democracy revolution.

Following the storming of the US Capitol by Trump supporters, Azman, a Hasidic rabbi who is one of several figures claiming to be the chief rabbi of Ukraine, posted on Facebook that the “Maidan has begun in the USA,” referring to the widespread protests that led to the ouster of pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. “The people protesting against mass election fraud broke into the capital. God bless America.”

Yaakov Dov Bleich, who also is a chief rabbi of Ukraine and the only one recognized as such by the World Jewish Congress and the European Jewish Congress, distanced himself from Azman’s words.

“Rabbi Azman is voicing his own opinion,” Bleich said. “I don’t think Ukrainian Jewry has or should have a stand on US politics.”

In May 2019, Azman was photographed in Paris smoking cigars with Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, fueling speculation among some in Kyiv that the president’s representative and his colleagues were using the rabbi to provide cover for illicit Ukrainian lobbying activities.

Kiev Chabad rabbi Moshe Azman with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani in Paris on May 21, 2019.

The Giuliani-Azman meeting seemed to have been arranged by Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Jewish Giuliani associates who have been linked to those lobbying efforts.

Trump was impeached in December 2019 after it emerged that he had pressed his Ukrainian counterpart, President Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate Biden and his son Hunter during a phone call five months earlier between the two leaders. During the call, Trump asked Zelensky, who is Jewish, to look into allegations that Hunter Biden had engaged in illegal behavior while serving on the board of a Ukrainian firm that was being probed for corruption. The Senate acquitted Trump in February.

According to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an international journalism network that tries to uncover political corruption, Giuliani was slated to deliver a paid speech at a fundraiser for Azman’s Anatevka project in May 2019. Anatevka — named for the shtetl in “Fiddler on the Roof”— is a gated compound outside of Kyiv housing Jews who were displaced by the war in eastern Ukraine.

Parnas and Fruman, who sit on the board of the American Friends of Anatevka, would have met with Zelensky “on the sidelines” of the Anatevka Project event, the report said. But Giuliani canceled his trip due to intense public scrutiny and the meeting never happened.

Instead he flew to Paris, where he attended a number of meetings — brokered by Parnas and Fruman — with senior Ukrainian figures. He also sat with Azman for two hours.

Illustrative: Jewish refugees at Anatevka celebrate the opening of the community’s new synagogue, February 29, 2016. (Courtesy of the Office of Rabbi Moshe Azman)

Azman, a staunch Trump supporter, presented Giuliani with a giant novelty key declaring him “honorary mayor of Anatevka.” Azman had previously told the Ukrainian news outlet Hromadske that he prays for Trump “every Saturday” because of the president’s support for Israel.

Four people died, one of whom was shot, during Wednesday’s violence, which saw lawmakers evacuated from the Capitol building. Several people have been reported hospitalized, including at least one member of law enforcement. Dozens of lawmakers, from the House and Senate, were contesting the results of November’s election that Trump has fraudulently claimed was stolen on behalf of Biden.

Bleich rejected any comparisons between what happened in Ukraine in 2013-14 and Wednesday’s events.

Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich, a chief rabbi of Ukraine.

“The United States of America is a strong democracy with many checks and balances, there is no basis for comparing it to Maidan,” Bleich said. “Many people are upset about the elections, including myself,” he added, saying that in his view “it looks like Trump won the elections and the Democrats stole it.”

This opinion is “causing frustration and is making a lot of people, including Rabbi Azman, emotional, but there is no place for violence,” Bleich said.

Azman’s claim to the title of chief rabbi is disputed, including by the World Jewish Congress, which in 2005 said in a statement that Azman’s title was not endorsed “by any rabbinical authorities.”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/one-of-ukraines-chief-rabbis-endorses-siege-of-us-capitol-by-trump-supporters/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2021-01-07&utm_medium=email

Just Sayin'

Hundreds attend hassidic wedding in city with highest rate of infections

As infections surge, mass ultra-Orthodox weddings held despite lockdown rules

Hundreds attend events in Beitar Illit, where positive test rate is highest in Israel at 26%, and Bnei Brak.

Police dispersed hundreds of guests at an ultra-Orthodox wedding celebration in the city of Beitar Illit late Tuesday night.

A police officer is seen surrounded by mostly-maskless hassidic men at a massive wedding in Beitar Illit that violated coronavirus lockdown restrictions.

 

Video footage has emerged of a massive ultra-Orthodox wedding was staged Tuesday night in Beitar Illit, the city with the highest rate of positive COVID-19 tests in the country, and the fourth highest rate of new infections per 10,000 inhabitants.The wedding celebration was staged by the grand rabbi of the radical Toldot Avraham Yitzhak hassidic community for his grandson, a part of the anti-Zionist Eda Haredit communal association.

Footage of the wedding celebration obtained by the Kikar Hashabbat news site showed hundreds of hassidim, almost entirely without masks, in an event hall singing and swaying shoulder to shoulder.
Other video footage showed police personnel waiting outside the building where the wedding was staged, although the police did eventually enter and break up the event. The police said that when they arrived the doors of the building were locked and those inside refused to open them.

Only after dialogue with organizers were the doors opened. Upon entering, the police said they saw hundreds of wedding guests who were not wearing masks. 

 

While the police were dispersing the wedding participants, dozens of them gathered outside the building and fought with the police, threw stones at them and damaged police vehicles, the police said.Additional police forces were summoned to the site to fully disperse all wedding participants and others who had gathered at the site.

 

 The organizers of the wedding as well as the building owners were summoned for a police investigation.In addition, Acting Police Chief Kobi Shabtai removed the officers who allowed the wedding to take place from their posts until the investigation was completed. 

 

As of today (Wednesday), Beitar Illit had the highest rate of positive tests at 26%, and the fourth highest rate of new COVID-19 infections in the country with 145.5 per 10,000 residents.

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/hundreds-attend-hassidic-wedding-in-city-with-highest-rate-of-infections-654445?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Hundreds+attend+hassidic+wedding+in+city+with+highest+rate+of+infections&utm_campaign=Hundreds+attend+hassidic+wedding+in+city+with+highest+rate+of+infections

Our societies are made of terrible, terrible people. They are not good people. The average person in our society doesn’t care about anything. Anything good or beautiful or true. Nothing matters to them. Only stupid and shallow and false things. The average person appears to have no sense of guilt, shame, no conscience, no morals, no ethics, no values, no decency, no civilization. We live in societies made of profound, pervasive, relentless ugliness, which nothing, it seems, can move an inch.

 

2020 Revealed The Truth Of Our Societies — And It Was Ugly

 

The Year We Weren’t All in It Together

Hooray!! The worst year in modern history is finally over. We survived. Or did we?

Let me explain why I ask that strange question. When I think of 2020, I think of two moments. The first was near the beginning of the pandemic. People cheered for doctors and sang from balconies. A spirit of sudden fierce determination prevailed. “We’re in this together!” people said. The second moment I think of was seven months later. 300,000 Americans were dead. Britain had bred a deadly new strain of the virus. The West was in tatters. And just a handful of countries had actually pulled together to fight the virus, all in the East. And so I’ll always think of 2020 as the year we weren’t all in it together.

2020 was a depressing, miserable, grim year. But not just because of the pandemic. Rather, because the pandemic was a kind of eraser. It rubbed away all the artifice and gloss and politesse we play games with. And revealed the truth of us. Of our societies. It was a profoundly ugly truth.

And now here we are. We know something about us that we didn’t quite know before. If we suspected it, as many of us did, now there is stark and vivid proof. Nobody can deny the pandemic’s grim revelation.

 Our societies are made of terrible, terrible people. They are not good people. The average person in our society doesn’t care about anything. Anything good or beautiful or true. Nothing matters to them. Only stupid and shallow and false things. The average person appears to have no sense of guilt, shame, no conscience, no morals, no ethics, no values, no decency, no civilization. We live in societies made of profound, pervasive, relentless ugliness, which nothing, it seems, can move an inch.

Not even mass death. Our societies looked at mass death, shrugged, and, after they clapped for the doctors for all of five minutes, didn’t change one bit. The irresponsibility and negligence and amorality of the average remorseless fool went on to cause an even greater wave of mass death. And what did they feel? Remorse? Grief? Sorrow? Not a thing. They didn’t feel anything.

The pandemic scrubbed away the polite fictions that we have accepted for far too long; our societies are “flawed,” every society is “imperfect,” we are “doing the best we can,” and so on. It showed us, without a shadow of a doubt, that our societies are made of sociopaths.

Take America, as an example. The world has long suspected that American are, well, idiots. Backwards, brutal, violent, greedy, selfish. More inclined to shoot a gun than read a book. Only interested in money, sex, fame, and power. Now, the world would say that, and once in a while, someone like me would object, and say, “No, Americans are just misunderstood. They’ve been abused by their society, you see.” Maybe that’s true, but…does it matter? Just because you’ve been abused doesn’t give absolve you from being an abuser yourself.

Americans didn’t care. As a society, as a country. About mass death. About turning a potential pandemic into a lethal, historic tidal wave of death. They flatly refused to change their behaviour one iota. Sure, maybe you did, but America as a society was completely incapable of change — right down to even wearing a mask or staying home for a month.

The pandemic revealed that Americans are exactly who the world thought they were. Violent, selfish, ignorant, deceitful, stupid — and then some. It’s one terrible thing to bomb half the world. But to kill hundreds of thousands of people in your own country…because you don’t believe a pandemic exists, or it isn’t that serious? And yet that is what Americans, as a society did. They killed each other. They proceeded to create a nightmarish Lord of the Flies in real life, a social Darwinian engine of death. The most vulnerable in society — the elderly, the poor, the frail, the sick — were picked off one by one. And nobody much cared. Sure, some brave doctors and nursed did. But they are the exception who proves the rule. Most of America, society, culture, economy, people, shrugged.

The pandemic revealed that our societies are largely made of sociopaths. Idiots seems to me to be, on reflection, far too kind a word. Sociopaths, I think, fits better. They are people who feel nothing for suffering, or worse, revel in it. People who have a kind of supremacy complex. People who are only ever calculating how to win some kind of game, defeat someone else, acquire and possess more. People to whom others are means to ends, not ends in themselves. People who value things over lives. People who, because they are incapable of having genuine emotions, are incapable of having any kinds of genuine relationships, either.

What happens when you put enough people like that in a society? What happens when a society crosses the threshold into being made of a majority of sociopaths? 2020 does. The pandemic never needed to be remotely so bad. If America had acted like South Korea, just 4000 people would have died. If the UK had acted like South Korea, just 850 people would have died.

But those simple statistics still aren’t part of the general awareness. Why not? What does that say? The sociopaths have warped the rest of us too. They have made it seem normal — if not outright desirable — to have their values: indifference, selfishness, materialism, domination, cruelty, violence, emotionlessness, except to fly into rage when all that is questioned. We are considered the strange ones for being repelled and disgusted by what is a now openly sociopathic attitude and stance towards life, society, politics, economics.

If you needed evidence that the sociopaths have won, by the way — what, 350,000 people needlessly dead wasn’t enough? — it’s there in abundance. Sociopaths can’t have real relationships: our societies are just like that, places of distrust, hostility, suspicions, if not outright enmity. Sociopaths don’t consider anyone else a real person, treat them with dignity, respect, care, concern, which is exactly how we treat one another, investing next to nothing. Sociopaths are like childish narcissists taken to the outermost extreme — what else would you call societies to whom “the economy” matters more than mass death? What good is “an economy” anyways if one its main byproducts is to kill people? There’s no shortage of evidence — in fact, the idea that you “need evidence” for any old obvious observation is itself kind of sociopathic. It says that you can’t simply feel what’s so achingly and painfully simple and true, that you don’t trust anyone else, and so forth.

How did our societies become sociopathic? All those wise old classical European sociology professors who taught me would have smiled darkly, and said: “capitalism.” They would have pointed out that people are just expressing capitalist values. Capitalism, meaning, by the way, Walmart, Google, Amazon — not your little local shop. Capitalism tells us that money, sex, power, and fame are all that matter in life, that acquiring and possessing more of them is the point of life, and the way to get there is to dominate and exploit others.

Capitalism turns us into idiots, slavering for another dollar, hookup, fan, like, follower, even as we dance to the lunatic tune of our own self-destruction. Capitalism is what makes us so selfish, stupid, brutal, violent, that we won’t stay home for a month so that hundreds of thousands can live — because we’ve been conditioned our whole lives long to be good, obedient, stupid little “consumers” and “producers,” but not human beings and citizens and decent, thoughtful, sane, kind people.

You can judge for yourself if Professors Hall and Le Page were right. What I do see, at work in the real world, is this. There is indeed a relationship between how capitalist a society is, and how badly it did in 2020. America is the world’s most capitalist society of all — and it is a total wreck. Britain is the second — and it’s closely behind America, making all its mistakes and then some. Europe is probably third on that list — and it seems to have erred just the same ways America and Britain did.

Still, I think there’s more to the story than just capitalism.

It seems to me that the process of civilisation in our societies is failing. By process of civilization, I mean “what it takes to produce a civilised person.” Civilising a person is very, very hard. It takes multiple institutions from childhood well past adolescence to do it. Schools, universities, clubs, athletics, arts, sciences, media, books, and so forth. The point of these institutions is to inculcate the basic virtues of civilization: from empathy to reason, from kindness to grace, from selflessness to courage.

Our process of civilisation does not seem to be working anymore. Those institutions and systems are not working anymore. Our societies are not producing civilised people anymore. They are producing sociopaths. Again, that’s not “my opinion.” It’s what 2020 revealed. The average person doesn’t care about anything anymore. They are not good people, which is what the whole point of the process of civilisation is: to produce people who are at least good enough that they don’t make a society melt down by way of indifference, stupidity, violence, brutality, and ignorance. And yet all that is just what 2020 revealed ours are all too capable of, and in fact did.

The average person in our societies appears now to be someone who is a) perfectly happy with mass death, b) emotionally indifferent to it, c) angry that they don’t get their own infantile way, d) resentful that any imposition on them was made at all, and therefore, e) unwilling to change their behaviour in any way whatsoever, of their own volition. All that is the antithesis of what it means to be civilized. It is the diametrical opposite of things like “having a conscience,” “being able to reason for the common good,” “being able to self-govern for the public good,” “being able to be a decent and thoughtful human being.”

The average person in our society seems to have experienced a kind of profound moral, emotional, and intellectual corrosion. Social: they don’t care about anyone but themselves. Moral: they don’t seem to be able to even see themselves as anything but what they’ve been conditioned to be, a good little “producer” and “consumer,” not a member of a collective, a family, a social group, a larger organic body with a higher set of meanings. Emotional: they don’t seem able to care about anything real anymore at all, to the point that even mass death doesn’t move them. And intellectual: they lack the ability to think critically about what all those deficits might say about them, add up to as a society, why the whole of human civilisation has been a story of trying to grow beyond such a weakened, corroded, empty self.

Where did that corrosion come from? Was it capitalism, like my Professors would have said? Or is there something deeper at work? Is it empire’s revenge? Is it the karma of slavery and subjugation? Are we just stupid people who don’t read enough, and spend too much on things we don’t need, and always have been?

You will have to tell me. I imagine we will both be spending a great deal of thinking about it this year.

Because the year 2020 was so depressing, grim, and relentless wasn’t just the natural calamity. It was that calamity revealed the truth about us. And that truth was ugly. We are stupid, violent, brutal, indifferent, careless. Enough of us, anyways, to make our societies that way, period. We added catastrophe to calamity. After we clapped, we soon enough stopped caring at all. “Hey! I need to go to the bar! My kid has to go to school! I need to go shopping!!” Good little consumers and producers, to the bitter, shocking end. But where did the human beings in us go, then?

And if you are a sane, thoughtful, decent person — well, how do you live in such a place? A dehumanized, violent, brutal, idiotic one? How do you live in a society of sociopaths? Isn’t it an oxymoron to begin with? Where do you go from there? How do you coexist with the kind of remorseless idiots who don’t care about causing death on the scale of a World War? How do you not shudder in contempt and disgrace every time you see them — which is all the time? But where does that leave you?

That, my friends, is the question for 2021.

The pandemic revealed that our societies have a total lack of empathy, goodness, decency, and a stunning capacity for indifference, malice, carelessness, ignorance, selfishness, violence, stupidity.

How do you live in a society like that?

https://eand.co/2020-revealed-the-truth-of-our-societies-and-it-was-ugly-dd251bd42578

 

Thank G-D For The Arabs - The Rabbis Would Kill Every Last One Of Their Own Without A Suicide Vest!

 

 Does concept of 'saving life' apply to preventive medicine?

MK warns of spiritual side effects as vaccination drive continues on Shabbat

 

All 4 HMOs vaccinate over-60s on sabbath (Oy Vey); rabbis say clinics’ computers violate rules, and they’re unlikely to give approval if there isn’t 24-hour effort on weekdays

Deputy Transportation Minister Uri Maklev holds a face mask during a press conference at the Transportation Ministry in Jerusalem on July 8, 2020.

Ignoring rabbis’ objections, and prompting fury from religious politicians, Israel vaccinated thousands of citizens on Shabbat.

The Health Ministry views all-week-long vaccination as key to achieving quick coronavirus protection — part of a plan, which also involves 24-hour clinics, to vaccinate more than 150,000 a day.

This past Saturday, the first of the vaccination drive, all four healthcare providers carried on giving shots to the 60-plus public, albeit at significantly reduced capacity, they told The Times of Israel.

MK Uri Maklev of United Torah Judaism slammed the Health Ministry for encouraging it. “How will there be a blessing for the work of their hands, when they harm Shabbat and the [religious] public in such a serious manner?” he asked rhetorically in a Haredi newspaper on Sunday.

The politician claimed that Health Minister Yuli Edelstein had promised him that there would not be Shabbat vaccinations, and attacked the justification given to administer them.

Edelstein said it was done so that the country can quickly deliver COVID-19 protection, and invoked the Jewish legal principle of saving a life, or “pikuah nefesh,” which trumps nearly all other religious requirements, including Shabbat. “The coronavirus endangers all of us, the vaccines will save all of us,” he said.

Hospital workers in protective gear are seen in the coronavirus ward at Ziv Medical Center in the northern city of Safed on October 7, 2020

But many Orthodox Jews say that “pikuah nefesh” does not normally extend to preventative medicine. “They put everything in the category of pikuah nefesh,” Maklev said of Health Ministry leaders. “We have seen in the past that many of their instructions did not stand up to scrutiny.”

There is no prohibition on administering or receiving a vaccine on Shabbat, according to most rabbis, but they say clinics should stay shut because their operation involves other actions considered to desecrate the holy day of rest, like logging patient information on computers and operating other electrical items that are needed. They also express concern that people are made to break the religious rule against driving on Shabbat to make their appointments.

The chief rabbis have refused to back operation of vaccine centers on Shabbat for now. Currently, “there is no permission to violate Shabbat” for the sake of vaccination, Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau said on Thursday, according to Orthodox media. (Lau and his father were able to get the vaccine almost IMMEDIATELY upon arrival in Israel)

Israel’s Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau

He stressed  that he supports vaccination, but argued that so long as clinics are not operating during every hour of every other day, working on Shabbat is not justified. For now, they should ramp up capacity without working Saturdays, he argued.

If and when clinics are vaccinating 24/6, “it will be possible to consider also vaccinations on Shabbat,” Lau said.

Even if the chief rabbinate eventually gives its blessing to Shabbat shots, there are indications that some influential ultra-Orthodox rabbis will remain steadfast in their objection to them.

The massively influential ultra-Orthodox halachic authority Rabbi Asher Weiss wrote that the situation is not urgent enough to consider vaccination an act of pikuah nefesh.

Rabbi Asher Weiss.

He was responding to questions from the UK and the US, so it is possible that he will issue another ruling regarding Israel. If he does not, Shabbat vaccination, even if part of a 24/7 campaign, is likely to remain taboo for a large part of the Israeli Haredi community, including politicians from Maklev’s party, who revere the rabbi.

The one proviso in Weiss’s position was for people in high-risk categories, or who risk infecting people who are high-risk. If they have Shabbat appointments that cannot be moved without incurring delays, in some circumstances, he would allow them to be treated — and even driven to the vaccination station in certain cases, though by a non-Jewish person, and not by a Jewish person who, in his estimation, is supposed to be observing Shabbat.

Religious objections are not stopping healthcare providers. A spokeswoman for Maccabi Healthcare Services told The Times of Israel that her nurses vaccinated 7,000 people on Shabbat, some of whom had appointments for next month and were offered to vaccinate earlier if they took Saturday appointments. Opposition from rabbis would not stop them during future weekends, she said.

Meuhedet gave 1,500 injections, mostly in Netanya and Tel Aviv. Leumit gave 2,000, mostly in central Israel. Clalit only operated in the Arab Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

Weiss and Lau both hail from the ultra-Orthodox community. But while religious Zionist rabbis are often thought to take more lenient approaches than their Haredi counterparts, when it comes to this issue, they have not done so.

Rabbi Shlomo Aviner

“If they aren’t working at night, it’s serious but not urgent,” leading religious Zionist Rabbi Shlomo Aviner told The Times of Israel on Sunday, saying no to Shabbat vaccinations. Like Lau, he said that if Israel were providing vaccinations 24/6, the answer might be different.

Aviner, one of the stricter rabbis of religious Zionism, said: “The vaccine itself does not involve Shabbat desecration, but the actions around it are,” giving examples of logging patient data on computers.

His observation that the injection itself does not transgress Shabbat reflects the laws as they are found in the book, Shemirat Shabbat Kehilchatah, widely viewed as the authoritative Orthodox layman’s guide for Sabbath observance.

The Hebrew text from the religious guide, Shemirat Shabbat Kehilchatah, which says that there is no Torah prohibition on taking a regular vaccine on Shabbat.

Rabbi David Stav, chairman of the moderate Orthodox rabbinic alliance Tzohar, also said he cannot justify Shabbat vaccinations for now, apart from “very high risk” populations, but added that he hopes this will change.

“I urge the government to decide how important it is to keep centers open, and if they are open 24/6, I’m almost positive that rabbis would allow vaccination on the seventh day as well.”

Does concept of 'saving life' apply to preventive medicine?

 

AMSHINOV CHASSIDIM LAST NIGHT!
 

https://www.timesofisrael.com/mk-warns-of-spiritual-side-effects-as-vaccination-drive-continues-on-shabbat/?utm_source=The+Weekend+Edition&utm_campaign=weekend-edition-2021-01-03&utm_medium=email

...But many Haredi leaders have failed this time, just like they failed in their attitude towards Zionism and the State of Israel, failed in their attitude towards women’s education, failed in not supporting the movement to free Soviet Jews and sadly, failed very often in their leadership during the Holocaust.

 

Their pandemic response defied Jewish values…and common sense 

 

They acted as if there was no disease, or if there was, it was not all that serious. Put simply, ultra-Orthodox Haredi leaders failed 

 

Ultra orthodox jewish man attend the funeral of late Rabbi Aharon David Hadash, spiritual leader of the Mir Yeshiva, on December 3, 2020, in Jerusalem

 

The Coronavirus pandemic has caused us to see many things, but more than anything, it has highlighted a grand failure of simple common sense. And nowhere has the crippling of common sense been more disappointing than in Jewish “ultra-Orthodox” (Haredi) communities.

Yes, we know that the denial, distortion and ignoring of the coronavirus pandemic has been widespread. A peek on the streets of almost any city in the world will show people disregarding masking, ignoring social distancing and no doubt engaging in cognitive distortions that range from “it won’t happen to me or my family” magical thinking to the dark corners of deep state conspiracies that include Bill Gates and the FBI. We know other communities are just as guilty. So why pick on Haredim?

Because their leaders, their rabbis, are not the vain and valueless icons of a secular world where self-indulgence and immediate gratification abounds. These are people who should understand what being a light unto nations is all about, and they of all people should know better and set an example. They should be the epitome of “kiddush haShem.” Instead, they stand out like a sore thumb as examples of the opposite. Defending them by comparing their behavior to other groups who also violate guidelines effectively lowers them to be no worse but also no better than the others.

In a world where what leaders do determine what the flock does, Haredim have much to be proud of. An extraordinary sense of community responsibility has created a plethora of organizations that feed the poor, care for the sick and tend to almost any individual need that a community requires. The sense of civic duty, the caring for one another and the spiritual uplifting that we see in places like Bnei Brak and Boro Park are models that others could and should emulate.

But many Haredi leaders have failed this time, just like they failed in their attitude towards Zionism and the State of Israel, failed in their attitude towards women’s education, failed in not supporting the movement to free Soviet Jews and sadly, failed very often in their leadership during the Holocaust.

So many acted as if there was no disease, or if there was, it was not all that serious. In Israel, suspicion of government motives morphed into accusations that guidelines were meant to specifically target only Haredim. In the diaspora, attempts to enforce guidelines that were also meant for everyone were met with accusations of “anti-Semitism.” Masks, the most “common sense” action we can all do, were seen as intrusive, bothersome and really not effective. Social distancing was but a ploy to suppress religious study and destroy Jewish practice. Rather than embrace the judgment of medical and scientific professionals, many Haredi leaders ignored warnings and did not do enough to enforce guidelines, amazingly despite the danger and death, it brought to their own communities.

Yes, we know that it was difficult, we know of the crowded living conditions, the lack of accessibility to internet-based activity and perhaps the lack of reliable information. And we know that many individual Haredim did act appropriately and responsibly. But how can one explain the masses that gather for funerals of Haredi leaders who succumbed to a virus that is spread by the very gatherings their people now attend? How can we explain large weddings attended by maskless rabbinical leaders, some of whom got sick because of their attendance? The community Hanukkah gatherings, indoors, not distanced and without masks? Where was the example and where were the pronouncements to a community whose members would not dare attend had rabbinical leaders prohibited attendance? Where was common sense?

How can a Haredi publication publish this: “Of particular concern is (sic) children who are constantly mixing with others at school, and who then go to visit their vulnerable grandparents who of course desire to spend time or a meal with those whom they love,” and then, in very same publication on the very same day, proudly publish a feature story with photos of a “a big crowd of families and friends” in a non-socially distanced indoor maskless school-sponsored gathering with dozens of school-aged children, teachers, rabbis and parents? How can another Haredi publication bemoan the serious condition of a Yeshiva head that contracted (and eventually succumbed to) the virus, stating in the very same article, apparently oblivious to what they were writing, that he was so healthy that he attended a wedding only two weeks earlier?

Despite dubious and somewhat arrogant claims that “we all had it,” the virus continues to spread in Haredi communities, as it does everywhere else. But unlike many communities, we still see mass denial, which a cursory glance at any Haredi publication on almost any day will show. So what if they possibly “all had it”? Does that allow the flaunting of this so-called freedom in front of others who have not? Does it allow one to act in a way that others may mistakenly believe to be proper? Does it allow separation from the greater community and allowing for one group that is not allowed for others? And what if, as we certainly now know, not “all had it” and wantonly ignoring guidelines endangers others, as it certainly has?

So why be upset at Haredim? Because in a community where Torah values are so important, values such as “la’ag l’rash,” “mar’it ayin” and even “m’pnei darchei shalom” — are being ignored and set aside. But more important, the value of an individual human life, of “pikuach nefesh” is now secondary to other concerns. 

The rush by Haredi leaders to almost unanimously endorse COVID-19 vaccines, relying on the same professional medical opinion that was ignored when it comes to COVID-19 behavioral guidelines, begs the question, why? Why is the science correct enough when it comes to individual vaccination, but not correct enough to discourage group gatherings? And since when did engagement parties, weddings and funerals take precedence over government required temporary restrictions meant to save lives? 

The answer unfortunately may be a sad commentary where social and political factors seem to take precedence over Jewish law and, of course, common sense. This is why we see many Haredi leaders in public and with their followers, not heeding nor encouraging distancing nor wearing masks. We see far too few examples of Haredi leaders who state publicly what is obvious to most responsible people. The science that allows vaccines that protect people is apparently not the same as the science that requires people to be separate and without the spiritual comfort and perhaps spiritual control that the group provides and that the group leader exerts. In normal times, the community values of the Haredi world and the spiritual sustenance provided by its leaders are to be admired. In times of crisis, in the past and now in the present, there are far too many examples of failure to lead, failure to serve as models and failure to save people who could have been saved. 

The crippling of common sense in many Haredi communities followed misinformation, rumor, social pressure and statements by leaders whose knowledge of the infectious disease was no better than their knowledge of how to change a flat tire. 

 Yet while they certainly would follow the advice of the local mechanic on how to change a tire and protect a car, they brazenly ignored the advice of medical experts when it came to behaving in ways that would protect lives. Eventually, the pandemic will be controlled and perhaps a reckoning of sorts will take place, a “cheshbon nefesh” where accountability will be demanded of leaders who traditionally have cared for the people more than they cared for themselves. Judging from recent history, that is not likely to happen, but, as we say in our prayers, we can hope for “chadesh yameinu k’kedem.” Renew our days as of old.

 https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/their-pandemic-response-defied-jewish-values-and-common-sense/

Let The Grifting Begin.....

 

Kushner Family to sell $100m. bonds in Israel - WSJ - The deal would be Kushner Companies’ first bond issue in Israel

 

It is not yet clear what role Jared Kushner will take in the company when Trump's term in office ends on January 20, the report noted.

 

The family business of White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner has filed papers to raise at least $100 million by selling bonds in Israel, The Wall Street Journal has reported.Kushner Companies filed papers earlier this month with the Israel Securities Authority to sell the bonds on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, the report said. The sale would likely take place in the first quarter of 2021.

Jared Kushner played a leading role in the Trump administration’s Middle East policy, and was instrumental in negotiating Israel’s normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. His family’s connection to Israel and relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu go back decades.The deal would be Kushner Companies’ first bond issue in Israel, although the firm has received loans in the past from Bank Leumi and Bank Hapoalim, and investments from Psagot and Harel, the Journal noted. The company has also worked very closely with Israel’s Steinmetz family, which made its fortune as one of the world’s leading diamond traders.

The company did not say what it would do with the funds, but the Journal speculated that it could be stockpiling cash to take advantage of a wave of cheap real estate opportunities that the pandemic could force in the coming year. Earlier this month, the company put up for sale a Maryland property portfolio that could fetch $800m. Kushner Companies owns dozens of real estate properties in New York and New Jersey, with an estimated value of some $7 billion. The company was founded by Jared’s father, Charles Kushner, who was pardoned by US President Donald Trump earlier this month for crimes of tax evasion and witness tampering, for which he was sentenced in 2004.It is not yet clear what role Jared Kushner will take in the company when Trump’s term in office ends on January 20, the report noted.

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/kushner-family-to-sell-100m-bonds-in-israel-wsj-653733?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Kushner+Family+to+sell+%24100m++bonds+in+Israel+-+report&utm_campaign=30+night&vgo_ee=GpJg07tMVeYHL7R3v4Zifm7%2BX%2FpMfSStElYb34Re%2FNg%3D

Oy Vey --- The Farkakte Victimhood Defen$e - When any community sees the majority of the world as a threat, as most in the Ultra-Orthodox community do, members of that community can always find ways to justify what others easily identify as illegal or unethical behavior, as long as those outside the community are the ones adversely affected.

... In the end, that approach will pretty much always allow the ones who participate in it, to justify their own bad actions.

Did An Ultra Orthodox Health System Illegally Give Out Covid Vaccines?

 

Sadly, there is nothing surprising about another story detailing a Haredi institution flouting Covid rules and restrictions. In this case, the story revolves around ParcCare Community Health Network, a group of six clinics which operate in religious enclaves of Brooklyn and Upstate New York.

ParcCare is accused of illegally acquiring Covid vaccines and of administering them to patients, outside of State-approved guidelines. They deny both claims, have shared paperwork confirming that the vaccines were shipped to them by the proper authorities, and claim that they have returned all of the vaccines that remained in their stock. But whatever they did or did not do, that is not the real story here.

It would indeed be easy enough to see this as yet another story of members of the Haredi / Ultra-Orthodox community once again circumventing public health rules, as examples already abound from the past 10 months — examples including schools and synagogues operating illegally, weddings and funerals attended by thousands of people, etc. But the fact is, that phenomenon is not limited to the Ultra-Orthodox community.

The fact is, that members of religious communities of most every faith have engaged in similar violations. How many ministers and Imams have also skirted the law, or worse, proudly proclaimed that their faith takes precedence over established public health norms? Too many. So no, this is not a “bash the Ultra-Orthodox” story, as popular as those stories may be with certain readers, offering people a chance to take advantage of a legitimate concern to “justify” what is often pre-existing hostility of a particular community.

In fact, the real story here is not even about the too-common invoking of freedom of religious expression, to justify illegal acts of gathering, even though it has been done far too often by far too many followers of different faiths. Again, those stories are typically reported at least as much to “prove” the dangers of fervent faith, and are rarely accompanied by parallel reporting about the kind of hostility to that faith that legislated that indoor dining could be legally protected as an “essential practice”, while indoor prayer was not.

The real story here is the serious moral hazard created by any communal narrative or faith which builds personal identity or communal solidarity based on a sense of otherness, victimhood, or grievance. 

When any community sees the majority of the world as a threat, as most in the Ultra-Orthodox community do, members of that community can always find ways to justify what others easily identify as illegal or unethical behavior, as long as those outside the community are the ones adversely affected.

It doesn’t matter if the grievance is well-rooted in the historic past, or even if it continues to be real in the present. It doesn’t even matter if mobilizing that sense of otherness — of being threatened by the dominant culture — actually succeeds in creating the very identity and solidarity which those who use it, seek to create. In the end, that approach will pretty much always allow the ones who participate in it, to justify their own bad actions.

And if we stop to think about it, there is almost no community which has not, and does not, too often fall prey to the moral hazard of the pursuit of victimhood, to the detriment of both others and ultimately to themselves as well. One way to measure if we are falling into that trap would be to measure how often we see those with whom we disagree as possibly being victimized by us. After all, victimization can be practiced by victims as well.

I admit that I don’t know the folks who operate ParcCare, but I do know plenty of people in the Haredi community, not to mention plenty of people in other fervently (fanatically?) religious communities, and by and large, they are good and decent people. There is plenty about which we do not agree, but that is not the point. The point is, almost none of them gets up in the morning and prays for help and guidance to harm others.

All too often though, the fervently faithful — regardless of the theology or politics for which they reserve their fervor — do get up in the morning each day, preparing to engage in an ongoing struggle with the forces — spiritual, political, cultural etc. — which they see and experience as threatening them and their way of life. And as this story reminds, that is pretty much never a good or useful way to start one’s day.

Yes, there are real victims in this world, and raising awareness of them is a genuinely sacred act. That said, when any community leans heavily and easily on a victimhood mind-set — a sense that is dominated by what has been done to them and what is owed to them, that excludes equal conversation about the obligations which are also theirs to assume — things go badly. Things go exactly as they seem to have gone with ParcCare.

http://thewisdomdaily.com/did-an-ultra-orthodox-health-system-illegally-give-out-covid-vaccines/