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But will you be arrested on your way to get the mask, for not having a mask?
I don’t know statistics, but I do know that all the rabbonim paskened at the start of this crisis that weddings for which a date has already been set should not be postponed, and should be held with a bare minyan. (R Hershel Shachter has even been mattir holding the chupah without a minyan, and therefore without sheva brochos, but I don’t think most poskim agree with him.)
Rabbi Greenspan, Joseph explicitly made that claim. That’s why I challenged it. He was NOT referring to Yom Hashoah. He never even mentioned it — I did, as an example of a date which the Rabbonim did object to, as opposed to Yom Hazikaron, which they did not.
And it simply doesn’t matter who chose the day or why. The fact is that this is when these kedoshim are memorialized, and we should not be poresh min hatzibur.
DMB what about his bleach comments? He did NOT suggest in any way that people should drink it or inject it. He reported that it kills the virus, and asked, quite reasonably, whether it was possible for doctors to develop some kind of internal treatment using this. That’s a reasonable question, and in fact there ARE studies going on about the internal use of UV light for precisely that purpose.
Those claiming he told people to inject disinfectant, or to drink bleach, are lying Democrat operatives and nothing more. They have no integrity and no shame, and should be shunned by all decent people. The same liars also had the chutzpah to claim that the man who drank fish tank cleaner was somehow Trump’s fault. Now the police are investigating his wife for murder. They also claimed that some guy went on a cruise because of something Sean Hannity would say A WEEK LATER. Really, no shame at all. Democrats will say anything, do anything, to attack the President.
The WHO is the LAST organization anyone should follow. It has no credibility whatsoever. It is a paid agent of the Chinese Communist Party.
Oh, and the Jewish Observer was zionist?! On what planet?
Joseph, which rabbonim objected to Yom Hazikaron? Name some, please. Do they compare in any way, bechochma uveminyan, with those who objected to Yom Hashoah?
And I don’t care who selected the date, or why. It makes absolutely no difference. The fact remains that this is the day that people remember them, so it has the same status as a designated yortzeit. In the absence of any halachic problem with the date (as exists for Yom Hashoah), there is simply no reason to insist on remembering them on a different date instead.
Ubiquitin, if you want to look at it like that, the “control group” is the total of people who were in high risk categories and presented with symptoms of Wuhan Disease, and were not treated with this mixture. Of that population, what percentage ended up needing intubation, and what percentage ended up dying? The answer is, a significant percentage. He’s asserting that 5%-10% of that “control group” progressed and eventually died. Thus, of his ~400, he expects that without his treatment 20-40 would probably have done the same.
But of course that is not a proper control group because all sorts of confounding factors have not been ruled out. So considered as scientific research this would be a bad study and would not prove anything. However he is not conducting research, and doesn’t purport to be. For his purposes it’s sufficient, and the only conclusion one can draw is that it seems likely that his treatment is helping.
When there is time to study this properly we will get a better idea, and may find out that it doesn’t help, and that his apparent success was illusory. He readily acknowledges that. It’s just not the most likely outcome.
Joseph, American soldiers who protect the whole free world certainly deserve our thanks and prayers. But we are not in such immediate danger as the Jews of Israel, and American soldiers are not putting themselves at such risk, or falling in such numbers, as IDF soldiers are, and there’s the fact that the IDF is the only army whose main function is to protect our people, not just us among everyone else. Those factors make the IDF special, even beyond the US armed forces, whom we must certainly not forget. At my shul, when it is open, we say a mi sheberach every week for צבא הגנה לישראל, and another one for צבאות ארצות הברית ובני בריתם.
As for the date of Iyar 4, it is the day that many Jews have designated to remember all the IDF’s fallen, and thus has the same status as a date that is designated as the yortzeit of someone whose date of death is not known. Unlike “Yom Hashoah” which was instituted over the rabbonim’s protests and is halachically problematic, there is no reason not to mark this yortzeit on this date, so it makes sense to observe it.
Charlie, does the National Institutes of Health exercise the legislative power, the judicial power, or the executive power? Which branch is it in? Unless you assert that it is part of the legislature or the judiciary, you must admit that it works for Trump, because the executive power is vested in him and him alone. Nobody but him can exercise it. And that means they are his employees and must obey his orders and work faithfully for his agenda.
And you shamelessly lie yet again when you claim that Trump told anyone to inject Clorox. It is a deliberate lie that your Democrat compatriots who parade as “journalists” made up for the express purpose of defaming him.
Common, we “managed” the way that one can, if necessary, “manage” Pesach without matzos and wine, the way one can “manage” without talis and tefillin, the way someone who is not a vegetarian can nevertheless “manage” shabbos without meat, if he has to. There are a lot of things we can “manage” without; that is no reason to do without them if they are available and affordable.
Some people may find that some things they thought they needed were in fact unnecessary, and may continue to do without them even after this is over. But that is not the general case.
Joseph, you should honor Israeli soldiers, whether they are Jewish or not, because they protect millions of Jewish lives. As a Jew, you are required to be concerned about the safety of any center of Jewish population, and especially one that now has close to half the Jews in the world. Zionism has nothing to do with this.
And those who died on that job surely have a special place in the Next World, just like chassidei umos ha’olam, even if they didn’t keep the 7 mitzvos.
See the Gemara in Avoda Zara about “yesh koneh olamo besha’ah achas”; it gives three examples, two of whom were nochrim, and especially the one who gained his olam haba by sacrificing his life to avert a decree against the Jews, and then circumcised himself on the way to his execution out of a desire to bind himself to the Jewish nation. Gentile soldiers who fell in IDF service surely have a similar din.
And of course the vast majority of the IDF fallen, who were Jews, deserve your greatest honor without question. They are kulam kedoshim, because of the Jewish lives they saved with their sacrifice.
Charliehall, of course the president is not a king; unlike Louis XIV he is not the state, but he is the executive branch. He does not “work for” or “head” the executive branch, he is it. HHS and Dr Bright work in an executive function, therefore they do NOT work for the people, they work for Donald J Trump, and it is their duty to implement his agenda without question.
That Trump can’t fire individual employees is a matter of civil service protections imposed by Congress. I doubt they are completely constitutional, but so far nobody has tested that. I would guess the best argument for them is that Congress appropriates money for the president to pay his employees on condition that he follows these regulations. But they are his employees, not Congress’s, let alone “the people’s”.
And yes, Bright was removed from his assignment for incompetence and insubordination. I have no reason to believe he is competent, and am certainly not going to take your word for it. Or for anything.
Nobody has mentioned what they’re now calling “shvantzonus”, which means being completely bottel to the Rebbe, obeying him without question, just as an animal’s tail “obeys” the animal without thought. Being devoted to giving the Rebbe nachas, having everything center around him. Chabad has the same thing, but calls it “hiskashrus” or “ibergegebenkeit”, which are both nicer words.
Quayboard, the USA’s casualties Vietnam war were exceptionally light, and not a valid comparison. Anyone who thinks Vietnam was bad has no concept of what war really is. The Wuhan Disease casualties are comparable to those of any heavy flu season.
There is little evidence that the lockdown has had any significant effect on the spread. It was sold to us specifically not not as a way to stem the spread but merely to delay it a little, so as to prevent us all from getting sick at the same time and overwhelming the hospitals. It’s very doubtful whether that was ever a real problem, since it was based entirely on models that proved to be nonsense (as most models are), but even if it was valid that problem is now over. The hospitals are massively UNDER-utilized. Even in NYC we had the Comfort here, and the Javits Center, and barely used them.
And yes, a life does have a price. Anyone who denies that is just an idiot. And the economic impact has NOT been worth the lives saved. We would have been far better off doing nothing and letting more people die. That is the reality, and shutting down your mind and pretending otherwise will not change it. But of course doing nothing was not the alternative. What we should have done is isolate only the elderly and the particularly vulnerable and then let the disease run through the rest of the community and accept the relatively few casualties that would have resulted (and will still result no matter how long we wait).
Besides which, even if one is so stupid or dishonest as to think that any expense is worth it to save even one life, the reality is that the economic impact will itself cost more LIVES than have been saved. Poverty kills. Economic damage kills. More people will die from the lockdown than would have died without it, even without considering the economic damage itself.
And we should certainly hope for miracles, as well as experiment with things like injecting some sort of disinfectant, or putting lights inside patients (which is absolutely an idea that IS being explored), or using vaccines developed for other coronaviruses (which is obviously the FIRST thing being researched). Everything the President has said has been on point, and your Democrat talking points are cynical and wrong.
Syag, you have it exactly backwards. By isolating ourselves we’re retarding the process of developing immunity. We’re keeping ourselves unexposed, so that when we come out we will be just as vulnerable as when we went in. We’ll be like the Native Americans when the Europeans arrived. The Europeans were immune to the diseases they carried; the natives who had no immunity died in huge numbers.
CTR, and others who think like this, how does it make you a better person to begrudge someone else his innocent pleasures? If someone has been given enough money, why shouldn’t he enjoy it? Why shouldn’t he have the things that he can afford? What else is money for? What I’m hearing is a very bad midah, sour grapes, and the inability to be happy for someone else. Worrying about how to get closer to Hashem is for each individual about himself, not about someone else. It is not your business how or whether someone else is getting closer to Hashem. On that you are not an oreiv. I forget who said it, but yenem’s gashmius should be your ruchniyus. Veyam’it hano’osov, not yenem’s hano’os.
Where R Chanina said it? He said it here. What makes you think it’s late? Because the Maskilim y”sh said so?! But even if that’s true, it must have been compiled from an earlier manuscript, or a set of such. The compiler, whoever he was and whenever he lived, didn’t make things up, ch”v.
“catch yourself”, that is not a mainstream opinion. In fact it is not an opinion within yiddishkeit at all. It is pure apikorsus.
The Rambam, for instance, whom you quote, says the exact opposite of what you claim. He criticizes two groups: The fools who think every medrash must be taken literally, when it’s obvious that some are metaphors or parables, or speak in coded language; and the heretics who dismiss medroshim and say that some of them are false. It seems that you are defending the second group.
Arguments used in vikuchim cannot be relied on — they are not Torah, and often the debaters deliberately used false arguments if they thought they would help them. The object was to win, not to tell the truth. We have examples in the gemara too, where an amora said something to an attacker and the gemara says that he didn’t mean it, he just pushed him off with a straw man because he didn’t want to get into it, or he didn’t want to tell him the truth. So nothing in the vikuchim can be taken for granted.
Pretty much every meforash on chumash will say that certain midrashim are not pshat. Even without the meforshim it’s obvious that that must be true. Midrashim by definition are drush, not pshat; sometimes they help us understand pshat and sometimes they’re irrelevant to the pshat and only address other levels of understanding. For instance it would be strange to try to learn pshat in a posuk from the Zohar. When the Zohar says a pasuk is talking about this or that sefirah, that is true. That is what the posuk is talking about — in addition to everything else. But it’s not the pshuto shel mikra. That’s all the Ibn Ezra and the others you cite mean. But chas veshalom to dismiss any medrash, to say that it isn’t true or relevant.
What are you talking about? What rishon says such a thing? Are midrashim not an inherent part of the Torah, every bit as much as mishna? Is not every part of the gemara equally Divrei Elokim Chayim? Shomu Shomayim! Do you know what כחיש מגידיה means? It is one of the categories of apikores! One who says this part of Torah is true and that part is not, is a 100% heretic!
Lurker, I’m using the edition at daat.ac.il. In which edition is this Parsha 8, and which two previous parshios does it combine? And if you had continued a little you’d have seen that it reconciles the two opinions. But even if it hadn’t, we are not free to dismiss <i>any</i> maamar chazal just because a different tanna says something else.
n0m, what do you mean, “The ma’amar is not ancient origin”? How much more ancient could it get? The source was cited in the original post that we are all discussing, and I quoted the exact language in my first comment. What more do you want? And why do you refer to Parshas Noach?
Sure there can be many lessons learned from every situation, and each person should take those most relevant to him, but when chazal say something we must pay attention to it. The first few people to respond to the original post completely dismissed it, as if it were some opinion by a modern writer who is their equal, and they can reject it at will. They can’t. What chazal say is the truth; it may not be the only truth, but it cannot be false.
What do you mean, how does it become a maamar chazal? It becomes one when Chazal said it. You are not free to dismiss any maamar Chazal. The mar’eh mokom has been given, and the exact text provided. What more do you want?
nOm, you are not free to dismiss it because it is a maamar chazal, and you don’t want ch”v to be included in the category of מכחיש מגידיה.
It’s Parsha 9, not 8.
ואומר (משלי טו): עיני ה’ צופות רעים וטובים.
לא כשאת סבורה, להנחיל הממזר שלך נכסי בעליך, אני מכיר הממזר ואני טורדו מן העולם.כההיא דאמר ר’ חנינא: אחת לששים ולשבעים שנה, הקדוש ברוך הוא מביא דבר גדול בעולם, ומכלה מהם את הממזרים, ונוטל עימהם כשרים, שלא לפרסם את החטאים.
So “common saychel”, “Mistykins”, and “NOYB”, you are not free to dismiss it. You have to take it seriously, because it is a maamar chazal, and you don’t want ch”v to be מכחיש מגידיה.
Joseph, none of these things are ostentation, they are things that are genuinely useful and make people happy. Most people would do most of them, if they could. For each item there are some people who don’t want it, and wouldn’t get it even if it were free, but I think most people would enjoy it if it were in their price range.
Everything on the list is inherently a good thing. Some of them are mitzvos, some are huge conveniences, they all make life more pleasant. That makes them good. But not everyone can afford every good thing. Those of us who cannot afford something should not pretend that we wouldn’t want them. That is what we call in English “sour grapes”, from Aesop’s story, the Fox and the Grapes. Rather let us be honest and admit that we would like those things, but we have higher priorities for our limited resources, and let us be happy for those who either have more resources than us, or whose priorities are different from ours.
All of these are good things if you can afford them. The problem is not that people do them, but that people who cant’ afford them feel they have to, that they can’t do without them. Now we’ve all learned how to do without certain luxuries that we never imagined we could. When this is over, those who can afford those luxuries will probably resume them, but those who can’t, and only indulged because they couldn’t imagine any other way, will now be able to reconsider them.
And even those who can afford everything may have surprised themselves with how little they missed some things. Maybe next year some people will choose to make their own Pesach, with guests, because now they know they can do it. Maybe they went away every year, not because they really wanted to, but because they were afraid of trying to do it themselves. Now they know it’s not so scary, they may do it again.
May it be with mazal and bracha, and from a small beginning may they grow great.
Katan, get this straight: The HHS works for the president. It is NOT ENTITLED to have its own “guidelines” and “processes” against the president’s wishes. And anyone there who pursues his own agenda rather than the president’s needs to be fired immediately, because that is what insubordination means.
No, Katan, stop lying. The decision to fire him for incompetence and insubordination was taken late last year, long before the current crisis began. And the record shows that he SUPPORTED use of hydroxychloroquine.
But had he said that ” that the stupidity of the Trumpkopfs rants at his daily WH press briefings should not influence funding decisions for clinical trials”, as you claim, then that would be insubordination and chutzpah, and he deserved to be fired for that alone. He seems not to have accepted that he worked for the president, and was required to show him respect and obey his orders just like any employee must show respect and obedience to his employer. No matter what he privately thought of Trump’s opinions, they MUST influence department decisions, because it’s his department.
The engagement is between the families. No reason they can’t do it on the phone or by zoom. The wedding will be in a few months, and by that time we may be out. If not, it can be done the same way we are doing previously scheduled weddings: A chupah with a bare minyan, and then driving around so people can participate from their porches and front yards.
Katan Hasheker, that is an outright LIE. Bright was fired for incompetence and insubordination, NOT for any objections (which he DIDN’T HAVE) to the promotion of hydroxychloroquine.
The fact that he is represented by the same gutter lawyers who slandered Brett Kavanaugh should be enough to tell you what a liar he is.
Coffee, he already gave his source, which doesn’t say what he claims כימי צאתך מארץ מרים אראנו נפלאות. That says nothing whatsoever about the makos returning.
RR44 , it is NOT a “clear posuk”, it is your own stupid invention. There is no posuk that says there will be a return of the 10 makos before moshiach comes. You made it up.
Search the web for “Five Problems With the Study That Claims ‘More Deaths’ From Treating Coronavirus With Hydroxychloroquine” by Matt Margolis.
No, Charlie, Hanosen Teshua Lam’lochim is NOT American. It’s centuries older than America, and is written specifically for kings, NOT for republics.
Trump may wish he were a king, but he isn’t one, and he knows it. Biden will think he is a king. The common factor is that neither of them has ever read the constitution, as was painfully obvious during Biden’s debate with Palin in 2008 — back when he could still remember what he had read. Nowadays even if he had read it it wouldn’t matter.
Joseph, even in a constitutional monarchy, if it’s a real monarchy the king is the master, and the people are his subjects. People swear loyalty to the king, and attempting to kill him is treason. He is bound by rules, but that’s nothing new; even the kings of Beis Dovid were bound by rules.
The elected government governs on his behalf, so that he can stay out of politics; but they work for him, not for the people. “L’etat c’est moi” is not just about Louis XIV; it is a plain factual statement of how a monarchy is organized. Just as in the USA the “executive branch” is the president, in a monarchy the “state” is the king.
(In the UK, since about 1700, there has been a separation between the king and the Crown; but the Crown is not a personification of the people, it’s a personification of the monarchy. It’s a sort of abstraction of the king’s “kingness”, as opposed to his personal attributes. The Crown is the king, just not him personally.)
The founders of the USA did something very different, and made the president a servant of the people, not the other way around. We are not his subjects, he is ours. Just look at how criminal cases are brought. In the UK or Canada, it’s “R v Smith”. In the USA it’s not “The President v Smith” but “The People v Smith”.
This makes it appropriate for a king’s subjects to pray for him and honor him, whereas doing so to the president is just the same as doing it to a janitor. He’s just an employee doing a job.
Actually, no, he isn’t my president. He’s president of the United States. There are 50 of them, and I am not one of them. That’s the whole point of the USA — he is not a king; some people seem to think that’s just a matter of a different title, or of being limited to a certain term, but it’s not. It’s a fundamental difference.
That’s why I very strongly object to those shuls who say Hanosen Teshu’a Lam’lochim, simply substituting “The President and Vice President” for “His Majesty the Kaiser”; that entire tefillah is completely inappropriate for any American shul. It’s literally un-American. If you want to say some prayer Lishlomah shel Malchus, find or write one for the United States themselves and for their constitution, not for the functionaries who are currently employed to manage them. That is precisely what makes them special.
Trump who declared the virus was a hoax
That is an outright lie. Shame on you.
Are you old enough to remember when President Nixon instituted price controls in the US?
Yes, and it was terrible. One of the worst things he ever did. It was wrong then and it would be wrong now.
Impounding them would also be illegal unless the owner was paid their current fair market value, which by definition is what they would fetch now, when and where they were taken. Which would defeat the purpose of doing so.
Why won’t shadchonim meet you over a video call?
Democrat rioters burning cities. Baltimore-style.
They didn’t do that last time. They made utter fools of themselves with those stupid pink hats, and diiscredited themselves with their refusal to accept the result, and with their #resistance and the whole shtick painting him as “literally Hitler” and as having some the very few character flaws that he actually lacks, but they didn’t riot.
Now if the convention is held live, and especially if Biden has to withdraw and Sanders still doesn’t get the nomination, expect Milwaukee to burn.