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“why are the black leaders and liberal politicians turning a blind eye towards the looting?”
They aren’t, but thanks for the bigoted generalization.
I should have mentioned that Jerry Nadler also has a primary opponent from the nutty far left. Please support him as well. The first time I ever saw him in person was at Lincoln Square Synagogue. He was davening Mincha from the Amud on the occasion of a yahretzeit and he did a great job. Rabbi Robinson acknowledged Congressman Nadler as a member of the shul.
“how could anyone align with a party that is pro-abortion and increasingly anti-Israel among other things”
Well the Democratic Party voters rejected all the anti-Israel candidates for President this year and decided to nominate Joe Biden, a man with a decades long record of support for Israel who also has Jewish grandchildren.
We do have a problem, though. Representatives Josh Gottheimer, Grace Meng, Gregory Meeks, and Eliot Engel are all facing primary challenges from the anti-Israel nutty far left. They are as strongly supportive of Israel as any politician of any party anywhere and deserve our support. Please send contributions, or help with the campaign if you can. I have been making phone calls for Engel. And if you live in any of those districts or know of anyone who does (all those districts have important orthodox communities) vote the right way and get your friends to do so as well.
Regarding the other issue mentioned, the pro-abortion position isn’t consistent with Judaism, but the strict anti-abortion position promoted by most Republicans these days is even more inconsistent. There are occasions when abortions are needed and many Republicans would prohibit those.
“I was going to consider voting for a frum person in the upcoming primary, but on second thought, probably will not.”
Why not? I voted for Joe Lieberman for both US Senate and Vice President. Before the shutdown I would see him in shul from time to time.
In most of the videos of looting I have seen the looters have been almost all white. Did anyone see the surfboards being removed from the store in Santa Monica, California? *All* the looters were white and they didn’t look poor.
I did see videos of dark skinned looters in the Bronx, some as close as two miles from where I live. With NYPD looking on, not seeming to care. Busting rioting in wealthy neighborhoods but letting poor minority neighborhoods get ransacked is not something that makes one think that the police care about all of us.
Three years ago I spent a Shabbat in Norwich, CT. Very nice small community. The couple that hosted me had just moved from Manhattan. They bought a 5 bedroom Victorian house in move in condition for $160K. The shul maintains an eruv and a mikveh. There aren’t a lot of jobs in Norwich itself but there are lots of jobs in Groton or Hartford, both commutable.
Has anyone ever figured out how to get sheet music to read from right to left?
That is a distortion of Torah. Maariv isn’t even an obligatory service al pi halachah, there is no chiyuv to daven with a minyan, and in extenuating circumstances one can immerse during the day; I know some women who are doing that.
Also true of Steinsaltz.
One of the people in my life I am most honored to have met was Lt. Gen. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., who was the commanding officer of the Tuskegee Airmen. He was long retired when I met him; he lived across the street from me in the 1980s. I met him through his wife Agatha who was a Democratic election judge in my election district when I was a Democratic Committeeman. Lt. Gen. Davis campaigned for Walter Mondale in 1984; I think he may have been a Democratic National Convention delegate. Later he would get a fourth star and be promoted to General.
He had been the first African American to attend West Point in almost 40 years; his father was the only African American officer in the US Army at the time and his nomination was sponsored by the only African American in the US Congress, Oscar De Priest from Chicago (a Republican!). Every other cadet at West Point was racist and they gave Cadet Davis the silent treatment, refusing to speak to him for almost the entire time he was a student there. After he was commissioned they prevented him from commanding white soldiers, assigning him to teach at all black Tuskegee Institute. His father had had similar experiences. He tried to join the Army Air Corps but was rejected because of his race; only World War II opened up the opportunity. Then Lt. Col. Davis (promotions happen quickly in wartime) was forced to serve under a white racist and only became the commanding officer at the very end of the war. The pilots were denied admission to all white Officers Clubs and some were arrested and court-martialed for making an issue of it. (This was not unique; Lt. Jackie Robinson, later famous as a baseball player, was court-martialed for refusing a bus driver’s demand to move to the back of a bus — over a decade before Rosa Parks.)
We cannot comprehend the humiliation Gen. Davis must have experienced. He wrote that it made him stronger and more determined. I found him to be an inspiration.
I mostly use Rabbi Steinsaltz. In addition to elucidating the Rashi, he often cites Rambam and the Shulchan Aruch for the actual halachah, and brings down interesting historical and scientific information, including drawings (Hebrew translation) or photographs (English translation) that help to place the text in context. Rabbi Steinsaltz also un-censors the censored text based on the old manuscripts so we get what Chazal actually said rather than what ended up in the censored Vilna text; sometimes the differences are important. Artscroll has more references, though, for anyone wanting to do more in-depth research on a single topic. And I think that the form of its elucidation is easier for beginners.
Until a 900 years ago, nobody went through shas with Rashi. Rashi was a change from tradition.
Not one but two independent autopsy reports said that he was strangled. Where did you attend medical school and where did you do your forensic pathology fellowship that trained you to critique the other pathologists.
Your lies are not just false on their face, they are a defamation of the name of God in that they attempt to justify an injustice. They make it look like Jews are okay with racism because as you know we would never tolerate this happening to a member of our own community. You are giving the anti-Semites ammunition.
Rabbi Weiss has been known to hug the officers who arrest him! And NYPD officers love him and love to do security duty at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale. One morning we were one short of a minyan. I went outside to try to drag a Jew off the street to make a tenth; I decided to ask the officer whether he was Jewish. Surprisingly, he did identify as a Jew, but said that he wasn’t religious. We brought him inside, gave him a tallit, and counted him as the tenth! He was so interested that he showed up the next Shabbat!!!
It is absolutely horrifying that people here are justifying Floyd’s murder. At least the officer who strangled him to death is going to be prosecuted for homicide.
If an NYPD officer were to have done to a Jew what the Minneapolis officer had done to Floyd there would be Jews rioting.
Would you apply that to rioting Charedim in Israel and America?
Be careful what you wish for. God may punish you by granting your wish.
That is “Rabbi Avi Weiss” to you and to everyone else here.
“Also anyone who accuses Trump of racism, antisemitism, or of pandering to racists and antisemites, let alone to “white nationalists”, is a deliberate knowing liar”
Anyone who denies that is a deliberate knowing liar. I already explained the Charlottesville and Michigan support. But Trump has himself spouted more anti-Semitic memes than any President in history. They are in fact almost exactly the same as the garbage that Ilhan Omar spouts, but somehow many of the same people who (correctly) blast Omar for her anti-Semitism give Trump a pass.
The good news is that it looks like Trump is going to lose to Biden, a good person who is a centrist, a friend of Jews and a friend to Israel. and the Democrats will probably take back the Senate as well. Biden also has Jewish grandchildren although unlike Trump he refuses to politicize that; Biden himself is Roman Catholic. Everyone should watch Biden’s speech from yesterday. It is the kind of speech that Presidents should make. And he didn’t have to illegally gas peaceful protestors or illegally seize a church.
“Does trump, and by default his supporters and the GOP, tolerate white supremacists/Nazis ?”
Obviously, but the folks here who support him have other agendas than the safety of America and the Jewish people. Trump described the Charlottesville Nazis as “very fine people” and the armed thugs with confederate flags and swastikas who took over the Michigan State House as “very good people”. Trump doesn’t just tolerate them, he supports them. He supported the notorious Steve King, who finally lost a primary last night. And he supported Paul Nehlen, an actual Nazi, in a congressional primary against Paul Ryan.
Anyone who has been paying attention knows that Joe Biden is not an Antifa supporter. Antifa isn’t a real organization, and isn’t really political — it is just a bunch of thugs who like to riot. I am more worried about the Trump supporters flying swastika and confederate flags who take over state houses with semiautomatic rifles, and Trump himself ordering the gassing of peaceful protesters and seizing control of a church. As should everyone here.
Once riots get started they are almost impossible to stop. And the consequences can last for generations. I lived in a part of Baltimore that had been bombed out in the 1968 riots twenty five years later. Most of the area was still vacant lots and it was considered to be a major economic boom when a single fast food restaurant opened up. I went back a few years ago; there is still one synagogue in the neighborhood and it is growing! In fact they just built an eruv a few months ago, which means that New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington all now have eruvim in their downtowns!
I have never rioted but I was an eyewitness to the Greekfest riots in Virginia Beach in 1989. It was scary. The police, almost all white, inflamed the situation and made things much worse. Miraculously, nobody died, and the businesses that were damaged mostly had insurance and were able to rebuild for the next season. It also helped that the Democratic nominee for Governor, who was black, and the head of the Virginia NAACP, also black, didn’t escalate the rhetoric. (I happened to run into the NAACP head a few weeks later; he was very interested in hearing a first hand account from a white bystander. I thanked him for his attempts to de-escalate. He wanted to know whether I had seen any KKK activity because he had heard reports that there had been some; I told him that I had not seen any.) The Republican nominee for Governor did escalate, and he lost the general election that fall. There were no additional riots.
“the Democrats, while still dismissing it”
Schumer publicly called for action on January 26, Biden on January 27, and Warren in January 28. Biden and Warren were quite specific on things that needed to be done. Trump continued to dismiss the importance of the pandemic until March 15, preventing any testing until late February, and lying about what US intelligence agencies had discovered. Two Republicans in the US Senate had that information as well and engaged in insider trading based on a briefing from the Trump Administration. Oh, and Trump continued to praise Xi Jinping even as late as March 24.
“fix stupid”
Darwin may fix stupid.
The lower fertility lie is one that idiot Muslim fanatics have been pushing about the polio vaccine.
In fact, NOT getting the Mumps vaccine can make a boy sterile.
“most of us have been exposed and have antibodies”
As of early May it was only 20%, not most, and it is unlikely that that number has increased to be “most” people in three weeks because people have been mostly observing the social distancing rules.
“Trump stopped all travel from China.”
That is a lie. Trump banned entry of Chinese Nationals into the US. That is indeed racist. But tens of thousands of other nationals were allowed to fly to the US from China after the fake travel ban, and were not offered testing. Worse, there was no ban on travel from Europe, particularly Italy, and no testing. The strain that is killing people here in NY is from Europe. Basically, Trump racism denies that white people are a danger.
It is totally legal — in fact a constitutionally protected right — to burn the US flag in any place where it is legal to burn something else.
” it’s a bit more complicated since the Glorious Revolution enshrined the principle that ultimately sovereignty rests not with the Sovereign or the Crown but with Parliament”
That isn’t completely accurate. The taxing power was already with Parliament rather than the monarch before the “Glorious Revolution” (which was anything but glorious for Catholics). OTOH the monarch even today as in theory a right of veto of any law passed by parliament, with no override possibility. However, the last time that veto was used (withholding of royal assent) was in 1708. But even that is complicated. One of the things that contributed to the American Revolution was that colonial governors appointed by the monarch continued to veto acts of colonial legislatures. And one of the specific grievances against King George III listed in the Declaration of Independence was the failure to set up any kind of democracy at all in Quebec after it had been annexed by Great Britain in 1763.
“Would the epidemiologist please explain the danger if everyone attending employs safeguards of masks, gloves and distancing?”
What follows is educated opinion, not backed up by rigorous research. There is still a lot we don’t know.
First of all, gloves are a particularly bad idea. Better to use hand sanitizer. I carry it around everywhere. I use it whenever I touch something. If you don’t use your local eruv and your rav does not approve of carrying it outside of an eruv you might want to stay home on Shabbat.
Masks don’t offer as much protection as people think. They do help to protect people from you if you are infected. The N95 mask is best but they may not be easy to obtain, and they aren’t always easy to fit.
The six feet distance may be too short, particularly if people are speaking or singing loudly, or coughing.
The shuls themselves may have ventilation systems that could spread the disease; it is possible to clean and disinfect them but it is quite expensive.
In my neighborhood, every shul is packed to the gills every Shabbat. We would have to massively increase the number of minyans if we were to allow people to maintain social distance. And the ventilation systems recycle the air, as mentioned above.
What follows is fact, not opinion:
We still have a lot of coronavirus disease, although our social distancing really did bend the curve. Montefiore Medical Center still had 191 hospitalized COVID-19 patients as of yesterday, but that was down from a peak of 1,148. New admissions dropped from 205 down to 15. But that is still fifteen people getting sick enough to be admitted to a hospital. And some suburban hospitals are NOT seeing a decline in admissions over the past few weeks.
Two resources I would recommend are the nightly videos by Dr. Stuart Ditchek, available on his Facebook page, and the statement by the Orthodox Union and Rabbinical Council of America updated today, available on the Facebook page of the Rabbinical Council of America.
I am a Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health.
Amen!!! And we can thank Hashem for restoring you to health.
Air travel and entry to the US is regulated by the federal government. Trump did not close the airports quickly enough. He claimed to have banned travel from China but that was a lie, and travel from Europe (particularly Italy) continued with no screening and no quarantined.
The bottom line is that Israel has leadership that listened to scientists and the US has leadership that promotes medical quackery and trashes scientists.
BTW a better comparison to Israel than NYC is New Jersey. Similar population and land area. Much higher COVID-19 fatality rate in NJ.
He also fessed up to lying to Vice President Pence.
Some supposedly frum folks here have forgotten the commandment about bearing false witness.
Actually I have been banned for life from Dailykos for objecting to the hard left too stridently.
So now you are defending the anti-Semite dictator Erdogan, whom Flynn illegally worked for. Beautiful.
“childish fighting between Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio over “who is the boss””
NYC Mayors and NY Governors have been fighting for over a century. Franklin Roosevelt actually removed the crooked Mayor James Walker from office while he was running for President; FDR had been fearlessly taking on Tammany Hall since his first year in the NY legislature back in 1911.
The real problem was that Trump was STILL telling people that there was nothing to worry about until the day before Cuomo and De Blasio agreed to shut down. And now Trump is telling people to open up too soon.
It will be a while but once we have a vaccine there will be a big economic boom as there is huge pent up demand for travel, eating out, entertainment — and the services needed to support those sectors of the economy.
I worked until at least 11pm every night last week except Friday when I stopped only a half hour before candlelighting. I also worked about four hours today. It is exhausting. But I am glad to have a job. So many people don’t.
“The only thing you can observe from that observational study is that Hydroxychloroquine-treated patients that were more severely ill, DIDN’T Do better than Non-treated pts. of HCQ.”
That isn’t what the study showed and by making the comment you show that you did not understand the methods used in the study. It showed that Hydroxychloroquine-treated patients who were in the SAME condition as the untreated patients did not do better. They used three different methods to make the treatment groups equivalent and got the same result all three ways.
“The same applies to Hall.”
I have never lied to a Vice President.
I have never lied to the FBI.
I have never been an agent for a hostile foreign government, much less an illegally unregistered one.
If you think that these things that Flynn did make him a better person than me I am proud to be in your doghouse.
“It is utterly inconsistent with Torah to espouse political views that are found on the modern political left. ”
Providing generous support for the poor is mandated in Yerushalmi Peah and codified as binding halahchah on all communities by Rambam. That is political left today.
Bava Metzia and Chosen Mishpat describe some pretty draconian regulation of businesses. That is political left today.
Next Shabbat we will hear about shemittah and yovel. That is much further left than even today’s political left would go today.
And our communal leaders have always advocated for governmental support for our communities’ needs. Also political left.
Not everything the political left supports today is consistent with Torah, but much of the political right today would destroy all of this.
Flynn DID make false statements. Remember that the reason he was fired was that he lied to Pence and Pence threatened edited to Trump if Flynn wasn’t canned. Pence probably didn’t realize that Trump himself was a massive liar like he had never encountered before.
And we forget that Flynn was an unregistered foreign agent for Turkey, which is also a crime.
“Well thank you for proving that it’s better to GIVE IT EARLY”
You have just proven that you don’t know how to read a scientific journal article. The article in question proved nothing of the kind.
“people are suing for governmental overreach”
Coercive public health measures are not governmental overreach. See for example Jacobson v. Massachusetts in which the Supreme Court allows forced vaccinations, which is much more coercive than anything anyone has done in the coronavirus pandemic.
What distresses me more here is supposedly frum Jews whining about rights. Judaism is not about rights. Judaism is about obligations. And we have an obligation not to endanger others.
Best observational study to date of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 was published less than an hour ago online by New England Journal of Medicine. They used three different methods to control for potential differences between individuals receiving hydroxychloroquine and those not receiving. No difference between those receiving the drug and those not. nejm dot org.
Lots of drugs cause birth defects. One example is methotrexate. It is an important drug for treating autoimmune disease and some cancers. It also is used to terminate ectopic pregnancies.
“makes sense to me”
Stop drinking the Clorox.
Promoting unproven therapies and refusing to subject them to rigorous research is quackery.
People are suing for the right to commit suicide. 🙁
This isn’t going to age well.