Year: 2020

Making Aliyah Demands Emunah, But Making Aliyah GRANTS Us Emunah, Too

The Aliyah Mindset

by  | May 26, 2020

When a Jew starts looking into making aliyah, they can get completely overwhelmed by all the logistical issues that pop up. Our brains are flooded with questions like:

• What the heck is an apostille and how did I get to this age without ever hearing of it?
• How did I accumulate so much stuff and how am I going to decide what to take and what to leave behind?
• How can I choose a community that will be a good fit if I’ve never lived in Israel?
• How will I make a living?
• How do I transfer my money to Israel without losing a ton on the exchange rate?

These are important questions that have to be dealt with and they can overwhelm. My advice is to keep a master notebook or computer file with all the information on the many topics you’ll need to address. For example, when we made aliyah, I created a spreadsheet for all the companies we were doing business with and whether I needed to cancel service, change our address or take some other action.

All these are legitimate aspects of making aliyah, but there’s so much more to it. There’s a whole new mindset that happens when a Jew moves to Israel, and that’s what I really want to talk about here.

Aliyah requires a total paradigm shift. There are 6.7 million Jews living here, including a few hundred thousand olim from the US. It absolutely is possible to make it in Israel, if you adjust your expectations and don’t try to recreate your American life here.

I’ve identified four important paradigm shifts that are important for a successful klita. These aren’t meant to be all-encompassing, but rather to introduce prospective olim to the idea that you aren’t just changing addresses.

You’re being called upon to change your mindset.

The Certainty Mindset
In America, I made decisions with a certain degree of certainty about the outcome. In Israel, the spiritual reality is different. Here, I learned that there are an infinite number of variables that we can’t control. In Israel, I learned to dial down my sense of control, in a way for which life in America did not prepare me.

Living in Israel, one experiences hashgacha pratit in a much more open manner. Doors open. Seemingly serendipitous meetings end up being deeply significant. Opportunities present themselves when we are least prepared. If you ask them, many olim will tell you that life got a lot easier once they relaxed into the flow, let Hashem run the show and stopped trying to manage everything.

This in no way means that we are not obligated to do our hishtadlut. We absolutely are obligated. My point is that, for those whose eyes are open, life in Israel makes it abundantly clear Who is running the world.

The Spreadsheet Mindset
When considering making aliyah, it’s natural to wonder how you’re going to make a living. You may have tried to plan everything out on a spreadsheet.

It’s true that some things in Israel cost significantly more than they do in the US and, unless you’re a Member of Knesset or high-tech CEO, salaries are generally significantly lower here. It’s also true that some of the major expenses Orthodox Jews have in America, like tuition and health care, are negligible in Israel.

Many Israelis, especially those who live in a city, do not own a car and certainly very few outside of those in the wealthiest households, or those who live in very remote communities, have two cars.

Israel has a public transportation culture. People from every strata of society use public buses, light rails and trains. That’s a huge paradigm shift for those coming from suburban America.

If you’re going to try to plot everything out on a spreadsheet, you may feel discouraged about your ability to make it financially. There is absolutely a certain amount of emunah necessary to thrive in Israel. And it’s important to remember that the same Hashem Who provides your parnassa wherever you are now is also overseeing things here.

A combination of emuna, tefillah and hishtadlut go a long way toward making a successful life in Israel.

The Shopping Mindset
Life in Israel is, for most of us, materially simpler than it was in America. We live in smaller spaces. We own fewer things. We dress more casually. We put more of an emphasis on experiences over acquisitions.

One thing that struck me is that in Israel, there are hardly any billboards. Traveling on highways in America feels like a constant assault on your pocket – Eat here! Shop here! Stay here! Buy this! Those kinds of messages are virtually absent in Israel.

In addition, though we have IKEA, we don’t have WalMart and Target or other one-stop department stores. We have indoor malls, but overall, shopping definitely requires more effort here which, in my opinion, reduces the tendency to engage in recreational shopping.

After they’ve been here for a few years, many American olim will tell you that the two things they miss most about America are their families… and the ease of shopping. (I lied. We also miss decent kosher Chinese food.) Yet, we adapt and learn to shop differently.

The Eretz Yisrael Mindset
I became religious when I was in my 20s in America. To me, Jewish life was about me, Hashem, the Torah and only a little bit about what my community called klal Yisroel. After living in Israel for some time, I realized that my understanding of what it means to be a Torah Jew had been grossly deficient.

I had completely missed the entire nationhood part of being a Jew. It’s all over Tanach, but I didn’t experience it until I lived in Israel.

Many years ago, when I lived and worked in America, I came to the realization that my Catholic secretary got all her holidays off because they were Federal holidays. I took vacation days for all the chagim.

In Israel, we live within the Jewish calendar. There are public chometz burnings and the municipalities collect schach after Sukkot. The foods on display in the grocery stores and the bakeries match the upcoming holiday. The public buses and the bottles of Coke wish you a Chag Sameach.

Although, due to our many sins, we yet lack a Temple on Har HaBayit, life in Israel already operates on Jewish time. Olim are aware of being part of a national destiny, of a Biblical story.

In a few months, we will celebrate our tenth aliyahversary. I’m not suggesting that it has been smooth sailing every moment. We’ve had our challenges. Of course we have.

But once we made some of these paradigm shifts, once we accepted the reality that we live in the Middle East (“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”), the unbelievable richness of living a Jewish life in Israel began to accrue.

I wish nothing less for you.

From Bring Them Home, here.

Basic Principles: Torah and Liberty

Quoting Rabbi Pruzansky:

    One of the most famous phrases in American history was drawn from the laws of Yovel, the Jubilee year: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” (Vayikra 25:10). Those stirring words are inscribed on the Liberty Bell (not all that it’s cracked up to be, but still worth a visit) housed in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall.  The Bell actually predated the War of Independence but has been associated with the drive for American independence since at least the 1830’s.

     The Liberty Bell notwithstanding, the Torah’s choice of the word dror to signify “liberty” or “freedom” is unique. It is the only time the word appears in the Torah in the instant context, although Yirmiyahu uses it several times. We are more familiar with the word cherut to denote the same idea, even though cherut is not found in the Torah at all but is frequently cited in the context of the rabbinic dictum in  Avot (6:2): “Read not ‘engraved’ [charut on the luchot, tablets] but ‘freedom’ – cherut – as the only free person is the one who is engaged in Torah study.”  That is cherut, not dror. What does dror mean and how does it differ from cherut?

…

Notice, though, how Jews speak not of dror, the undisciplined form of liberty that allows people to follow their consciences, muses and desires, but of cherut, a freedom that is “engraved,” carved on the tablets of the law, rooted in something external to us – the Divine Word. Freedom is the right to live with abandon or a reckless rejection of any inhibition but is rather embedded in our capacity to choose, to subdue our inclinations and harness our energies and resources to serve G-d. And the choices that are presented to us are not simply trivial flavors of life or varieties of experiences but have real world consequences. We choose the good or the opposite, life or the opposite, and so develop our souls for eternal life.

There are two concepts of freedom and each reflects the milieu most appropriate for it. The American concept reflects the ideal for a secular society; the heavy hand of the ruling class has historically been unkind to individual freedoms and the pursuit of happiness, and thus liberty remains the prevailing ethos and with good reason.

Conversely, the Torah view is the archetype for a religious nation. It promotes discipline and self-control, and mandates both behavior and values that bring a godly and sacred dimension to life. Such is only possible in a divinely-ordained system.

We must understand both systems and remember never transpose them. We must never let the American ethos pervade the Jewish moral standard – something that has been the bane of modern life and much of the last century. Only then can we remain faithful to our divine mandate and true to our mission.

Find the rest of the article here…

Rabbi Avigdor Miller and others often misunderstand classical liberalism.

The liberal idea consists of limiting the secular government’s ability (in the “soft power” sense of public legitimacy) to constrict freedoms (“Dror”), or “Negative Liberty”. What one should then do with one’s life and liberty (“Cherut”), or “Positive Liberty” is a religious question, not a secular, political one. And political freedom, too, is Divinely ordained.

To quote Mr. Libertarian himself:

The fact is that libertarianism is not and does not pretend to be a complete moral or aesthetic theory; it is only a political theory, that is, the important subset of moral theory that deals with the proper role of violence in social life.

Political theory deals with what is proper or improper for government to do, and government is distinguished from every other group in society as being the institution of organized violence. Libertarianism holds that the only proper role of violence is to defend person and property against violence, that any use of violence that goes beyond such just defense is itself aggressive, unjust, and criminal. Libertarianism, therefore, is a theory which states that everyone should be free of violent invasion, should be free to do as he sees fit, except invade the person or property of another. What a person does with his or her life is vital and important, but is simply irrelevant to libertarianism.

It should not be surprising, therefore, that there are libertarians who are indeed hedonists and devotees of alternative lifestyles, and that there are also libertarians who are firm adherents of “bourgeois” conventional or religious morality. There are libertarian libertines and there are libertarians who cleave firmly to the disciplines of natural or religious law. There are other libertarians who have no moral theory at all apart from the imperative of non-violation of rights. That is because libertarianism per se has no general or personal moral theory.

Libertarianism does not offer a way of life; it offers liberty, so that each person is free to adopt and act upon his own values and moral principles. Libertarians agree with Lord Acton that “liberty is the highest political end” – not necessarily the highest end on everyone’s personal scale of values.

Jonathan Rosenblum – Important Article on the Crucial Is-Ought Distinction

Science Can’t Tell Us What to Do

by Jonathan Rosenblum
Mishpacha Magazine
May 13, 2020

Much of what is called “science” today does not fit the definition

Some years back, I wrote a column responding to a question posed by my oldest son: “The issue of global warming would seem to be an empirical one. So why does the belief in anthropogenic global warming correlate so strongly to political party?”

In late March, syndicated columnist and talk show host Dennis Prager asked the same question with respect to preferred responses to the SARS-CoV-2 virus: The virus does not distinguish according to political affiliation, so why shouldn’t there be more agreement on the proper response?

That there is such a political divide is uncontestable. A recent Rasmussen poll found that 67 percent of Republicans, but only 24 percent of Democrats, agree with the statement, “It’s time for America to get back to work.”

A congeries of factors goes into the explanation — sociological, ideological, political, and perhaps even theological. Let’s start with the sociological. While the coronavirus does not distinguish according to political affiliation, the rate of infection has been far greater in urban areas. And the Democratic Party is increasingly the party of the more densely populated coasts.

And where the Democratic Party was once the party of the “working man” and the Republican Party that of “big business,” today the former has become the party of the rich and credentialed elites. The rich, who do not live from paycheck to paycheck, are simply better able to weather a prolonged economic lockdown. As a friend at a major national law firm told me recently, “We lawyers will come out fine. They’ll still need us for all the post-coronavirus reorganizations.” Moreover, the more educated segment of the workforce, as opposed to those tied to the service sector, is more likely to be able to work from home during a lockdown.

In terms of ideology, there is a certain strain of anti-capitalist sentiment conjoined with an obsession with global warming on the left wing of the Democratic Party. The drastic reduction in carbon emissions due to reduced vehicular and air travel has been celebrated in some circles as an instance of the planet healing itself.

More tentatively, I suspect that there is also a theological dimension. The Republican Party is increasingly the party of religious believers, while the left is increasingly dismissive or even hostile to religion. The lack of religious belief makes leftists more inclined to catastrophic predictions, of which those surrounding a global pandemic are only one form. Malthusian predictions that various natural resources will soon be exhausted or the planet overrun with too many people are others. Warnings renewed every decade that we have only ten years to doomsday are a feature of modern life.

Those who believe in a beneficent G-d, Who created the world for a purpose, approach the future with more optimism and confidence that the “Hand of G-d” will not prove incapable of supplying humanity’s needs and that He has imbued human beings with the ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

Finally, there is a political dimension to the different stances of the two parties. Though Donald Trump’s persona has not captivated most Americans, at the time the coronavirus struck, he was presiding over a booming economy, with unemployment rates at near historic lows, and a bullish stock market. His reelection seemed likely.

The more distant memories of those first three years of economic boom are from voters’ minds in November, the weaker Trump’s electoral prospects. A prolonged lockdown virtually guarantees a deep recession at minimum.

The mainstream media has taken the lead in promoting the most alarmist predictions concerning ending the lockdown. At one level, the media always has an alarmist bias: Bad news sells.

But there is a political motivation as well. The overwhelmingly Democratic mainstream media is fully mobilized to push Trump from office. Martin Tolchin, a 40-year Timesman and the founder of two D.C. insider publications, The Hill and Politico, spoke for many in the media in a letter to the Times arguing against any investigation into charges that Joe Biden harassed a female former staffer: “I don’t want an investigation… I don’t want justice… I want the removal of Donald Trump from office and Mr. Biden is our best chance.”

IN TRUTH, both my son’s and Prager’s questions are based on a false premise, namely that “science” or “data” can, by themselves, dictate an objectively appropriate policy.

Yes, good policy necessitates the input of the best available information and clear thinking. But calls for letting the “experts” decide are generally synonyms for a larger, more intrusive, centralized government, and a shift from democratic governance and market mechanisms to a government dominated by unelected administrative agencies. That is what White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel meant when he declared with respect to the 2008 financial crisis, “No crisis should ever go to waste.” To wit, every crisis — and the bigger the better — should be used to expand the writ of the central government.

In the same vein, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said the other day that the current pandemic provides a “wonderful opportunity to transform our society.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tried to do precisely that when she attached to the $1.8 trillion rescue plan for desperate workers and businesses a host of riders requiring corporate boards to meet racial and gender quotas, airlines to reduce carbon emissions by 50 percent, additional wind and solar tax credits, and extraordinary new collective bargaining power for public employee unions.

The issue between the parties is not, as Democrats would have it, respect for scientific knowledge or its opposite. If there is one issue, for instance, on which there is a consensus among mainstream economists, it is that dramatic increases in the minimal wage will, absent an extreme labor shortage, lead to increased unemployment, spur automation, and reduce the overall wages of workers due to a decline in hours. Yet raising the minimum wage is a mainstay of every Democratic platform.

As great as the contribution science has to make reducing the threat of the COVID-19 virus, it remains crucial not to lose sight of its limitations as well. That means not exaggerating the level of scientific knowledge or the degree of consensus. Dr. John Ionnidis, Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology, Population Health, and Bio-Medical Data Science at Stanford, has written that only about ten percent of published scientific findings turn out to be reproducible.

Anyone who follows nutrition science knows how constantly shifting are the verdicts on the benefits and harms of various foods — e.g., eggs, dietary fat, coffee, red wine. In the current plague, information about face masks has similarly fluctuated greatly.

Much of what is called “science” today does not fit the definition, in particular the mathematical modeling to predict the future. That modeling inevitably depends on multiple assumptions or approximations and often relies on data that is itself highly suspect. A full picture of climate systems depends on knowledge of 20 or more sub-specialties, and no modeler possesses that. Not surprisingly, neither the global warming models nor those developed during the current plague have proven to have much predictive value.

But even if all the facts were known and the impact of different policy choices capable of being predicted, they would not dictate the choices to be made. The experts do not possess any calipers to weigh the economic suffering of tens of millions versus lives saved.

They cannot tell policymakers how to balance greater protection for vulnerable populations against the lives of millions around the globe who will be thrust into starvation by the breakdown of global food chains. Remember how the ethanol mandate caused the world prices of grain to rise sharply and led to rampant nutrition insufficiency in many poorer countries. (Not to mention that the production of ethanol released carbon emissions equal to any saved.)

Issues such as to what degree of infringements on personal privacy are justified in pursuit of public health, or to what extent individuals should be allowed to accept risk upon themselves — e.g., grandparents who want to see their grandchildren — are ultimately value questions. And on those, scientists have nothing more to say than you and I.

From Jewish Media Resources, here.

UPDATE: How to Sacrifice One’s Children to Molech

Moloch Announces Forcing Your Kids To Become Transgender Is Acceptable Form Of Sacrifice

October 24th, 2019

WASHINGTON, D.C.— The ancient god Moloch has announced that in lieu of the actual blood sacrifice of your children, you can now simply force your kids to become transgender as an alternative.

“Honestly, I still prefer killing your kids in ritual sacrifice or aborting them,” he said at a press conference. “I guess I’m old-fashioned like that. But coercing your kids into undergoing harmful surgery and hormone treatments works just as well, I suppose. As long as you’re sacrificing your kid’s future to the progressive, humanistic agenda, it doesn’t matter one way or the other.”

Moloch said that parents who encourage their young children who haven’t hit puberty yet or started thinking about sexuality at all to think about changing genders will be under the protection and favor of his evilness. “I am appeased by such sacrifice. A child’s life is ruined so that a parent may appear woke in the eyes of her friends—truly a diabolical ritual that I wholly approve of.”

From Babylon Bee, here.