Year: 2020

The Charedi War Against the Temple Mount (& Hyehudi.org)

An influential friend of the site tried to involve a certain high-up “Gadol” on behalf of Hyehudi’s NetFree ban. This person, after hearing something of the site’s views, requested to hear about Hyehudi’s stance on ascending Har Habayis. I responded, loud and clear. And… that was the end of that, of course. NetFree blocks Rabbi Yitzchak Brand’s site for this very reason.

It’s one thing to oppose restoring the Temple, which begins by conquering it with our footsteps, but quite another to censor any and all contrary views. In Charedi society, one cannot send one’s children to the best schools unless one first signs a paper proclaiming the parents don’t own “uncensored” internet (even if the children have zero access). The basic standard acceptable to the Thought Police is either NetFree or Nativ (the latter is easily hacked, by the way).

I empathize with Hashem: “Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I think I’m going to…” How is He Whose Name Dwells In This Building ever to get His home back without nullifying our free will?!

This Rosh Yeshiva (almost my own) is a “comrade of Yeravam ben Nevat”!

Taanis 28a:

תנו רבנן מה הן בני סלמאי הנתופתי אמרו פעם אחת גזרה המלכות גזירה על ישראל שלא יביאו עצים למערכה והושיבו פרוזדאות על הדרכים כדרך שהושיב ירבעם בן נבט על הדרכים שלא יעלו ישראל לרגל מה עשו יראי חטא שבאותו הדור הביאו גזיריהן ועשו סולמות והניחו על כתפיהם והלכו להם כיון שהגיעו אצלן אמרו להם להיכן אתם הולכים אמרו להם להביא גוזלות משובך שלפנינו ובסולמות שעל כתפינו כיון שעברו מהן פירקום והביאום והעלום לירושלים ועליהם ועל כיוצא בהם הוא אומר זכר צדיק לברכה ועל ירבעם בן נבט וחבריו נאמר ושם רשעים ירקב.

Yalkut Shmuel 1:8, 106:

ויאמר ד’ אל שמואל שמע בקול העם. תני ר’ שמעון בן יוחאי אומר לא אותך מאסו כי אותי מאסו וכו’ בשלשה דברים עתידים למאוס, במלכות שמים, ובמלכות בית דוד, ובבנין בית המקדש, אימתי מאסו שלשתם בימי ירבעם, הדא הוא דכתיב ויען איש ישראל ויאמרו אין לנו חלק בדוד זו מלכות שמים, ולא נחלה בבן ישי זו מלכות בית דוד, איש לאהליו ישראל ולא לבית המקדש אל תקרי לאהליו אלא לאלהיו.

א”ר סימון בר מנסיא אין ישראל רואין סימן גאולה לעולם עד שיחזרו ויבקשו שלשתם, הדא הוא דכתיב אחר ישובו בני ישראל ובקשו את ה’ אלהיהים זו מלכות שמים, ואת דוד מלכם זו מלכות בית דוד, ופחדו אל ה’ ואל טובו זה בית המקדש.

By the way, there many such topics I am too affected to write about. I wait until somebody else approximates my message, and let them say it for me (though this makes me seem less fervent on the matter).

Masterpiece Cakeshop Tyranny Was Copied to Israel – Now Comes the Appeal

Printing house appealed: We did not discriminate

Posted on July 2, 2020

Thursday, July 2, 2020, 12:27

The owners of the “Tzivei HaKeshet” printing house appealed to the Be’er Sheva District Court regarding the ruling by Be’er Sheva Magistrates Court Judge Orit Lipschitz which obligates them to compensate the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), specifically Israel’s LGBT Task Force associated with it, known as “The Aguda”, for discrimination. The owners of the printing house were required to pay The Aguda the sum stipulated in the suit and also the maximum compensation set by law. In the appeal the printing house owners claim that they acted in accordance with the freedoms of religion, conscience and trade, and point out the flaws in the court ruling.

The appeal was filed by Honenu Attorney Menashe Yado, who wrote that the fundamental question in the case is, “Is it appropriate and is it possible to compel a religious business owner to produce a product contrary to his beliefs, his values, his sensitivities, and the commandments of his religion?” Also the court ruling faced the appellants with the dilemma of either earning an income or following the Torah.

Yado stated that the court ruling “creates secular coercion according to the LGBT narrative and imposes it on religious people, and that is a severe and precedential violation of the freedom of religion and trade in the private sector.” He explained that the Be’er Sheva Magistrates Court erred in its interpretation of the anti-discrimination law being as in the case of the printing house there was no discrimination: the place in question is not a public place, the service requested was not a public service, the matter did not involve a product or the supply of a product, but rather the matter pertained to providing a service.

The appeal claimed that the right of the appellants not to perform a service contrary to their beliefs – such as when an issue involves tension between social groups based on the rights of an individual – is the right of the religious public as a whole. Additionally, the Be’er Sheva Magistrates Court erred when it did not consider the freedom of trade of the appellants and their freedom of religion and also did not consider the halachic opinion which they submitted.

Concerning the principle of tolerance, the appeal claimed, “It is obvious that butcher shop owners would not order design work from a vegetarian designer, members of the ‘No’am’ political party would not request printing of ‘Man + Woman = Family’ fliers from a printing house owned by LGBT owners, right-wingers would not print fliers in memory of Rahavam Ze’evi, z”l, at a Muslim Arab printing house and a bereaved parent would not be required to provide stage services for an evening in joint memory of Israeli and Palestinian victims.”

In the appeal Yado mentioned a similar ruling handed down in the USA concerning a Christian baker who refused to bake a wedding cake with male figurines for a homosexual couple. There the court ruled that with all due respect to desire of the couple to receive recognition, it was not possible to force someone to give them the recognition at the expense of his sensitivities and his conscience. “There must be tolerance for the values, the beliefs and the sensitivities of others, in this instance those of a religious person.”

The summary of the appeal states that the Be’er Sheva Magistrates Court compelled the appellants to violate religious prohibitions and that the court erred in its decision to convict the appellants of discrimination against the respondent, because there had not been discrimination but rather ideological opposition.

Honenu Attorney Menashe Yado, who is representing the appellants, the printing house owners: “The appeal is supported by strong and sound claims and we hope and believe that the [Be’er Sheva] District Court will accept our claims and overturn the ruling handed down by the [Be’er Sheva] Magistrates Court.”

“We reiterate that approximately two months ago a court ruling was handed down concerning the refusal of a printing house in Be’er Sheva to produce material for the LGBT association on the Ben Gurion University campus. The association emailed a request for a price estimate for printing material. In response, the printing house emailed a warning not to send them abhorrent material: ‘We do not handle abhorrent material; we are Jews,’ and refused to print the requested material. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel sued the printing house owners and the Be’er Sheva Magistrates Court convicted them of discrimination. The owners have filed an appeal on the decision, and we hope that our claims will be accepted.”

Honenu: Support the printing house!

Immediately after the Be’er Sheva Magistrates Court ruling Honenu distributed fliers – see image above – calling on the public to support the printing house: “Today, in the Jewish State, a printing house that refused to print fliers which violated Jewish law and their faith, was fined over 50,000 NIS [50,00 NIS to the plaintiffs in addition to legal expenses] by the court!! This is the price of keeping mitzvot in the State of Israel.

“Following the publication of the scandalous ruling we have received many requests for information from citizens interested in assisting the business owner who was fined. Whoever needs quality printing services is invited to place an order.”

Shmuel (Zangi) Meidad, the director of Honenu: “Today, unfortunately a court in Israel crossed a line. What is left for us is the People of Israel, solidarity, and mutual assistance. ‘They helped every one his neighbor; and every one said to his brother: “Be strong”.’ (Isiah 41:6) The Torah and faith in G-d were here long before the court and they will be here forever.”

From Honenu, here.

Apply This to Israeli Government ‘Second Wave’ Corona Fearmongering…

Why I’m Not That Worried About Latest Increase in U.S. COVID Cases (At Least Not Yet)

Monday, July 6, 2020

As we have lifted the lockdowns, we move closer and closer to whatever the “new normal” may be. Those have been clamoring for extended lockdowns worry that the lockdowns have been lifted prematurely. The New York Times dismally lamented about a gloomy picture. The Los Angeles Times analogize the spread of COVID-19 to a forest fire. One of the main metrics that lockdown proponents have used to try to justify either returning to lockdowns or prolonging reopening provisions is that of increased confirmed cases. As we see below (figures extracted from Johns Hopkins website on July 5), the number of confirmed cases has reached 52,391. The percent of positive cases has also increased to 7.6% from its 4.4% trough. Dr. Anthony Fauci called last week “a very disturbing week” in terms of this increase. While it might make some intuitive sense to use number of confirmed cases as basis for whether the pandemic is getting worse in the United States (especially relative to other countries), I have some reasons to doubt that assertion.

  • Confirmed cases are not indicative of total amount of infected individuals. One of the best features in favor of confirmed cases as a metric is that it is one of the earlier indicators within the infection timeline. Hospitalizations lag infections, and deaths lag hospitalizations. As nice as it might seem, it does not tell us as much as we would like. As a matter of fact, well-renown statistician Nate Silver wrote a piece in April about how coronavirus tests are actually meaningless. Especially at the beginning of the pandemic, the testing was prioritized for those showing symptoms. While the testing is still skewed in that direction, increased testing capabilities has allowed for more mildly symptomatic or asymptomatic individuals to get tested. Since the testing is not randomized, it suffers from a selection bias that makes COVID-19 look deadlier than it is. Over time, we see that the crude fatality rate (CFR) end up higher than the infection fatality rate (IFR), the latter of which being the apparent death rate.
    • On June 25, the CDC said that for every confirmed case, there are about ten people who had antibodies. At that moment, there were about 2.3 million confirmed cases, which means there were at least an estimated 23 million actual cases.
    • In case you did not have enough evidence that there are a lot more infected than we think, the Pennsylvania State University released an eye-opening paper late last month. This Penn State study examined influenza-like illnesses (ILI) surveillance data. After looking through the ILI data, they concluded that the initial infection rate was much higher. Rather than the initially estimated 100,000 new cases in the last three months, they estimated that there were actually 8.7 million cases, which implies an initial infection rate over 80 times higher than initially estimated. They also found that the number of cases also double twice as quickly as initially estimated (Silverman et al., 2020).
    • As Reason Magazine points out, even if we want to use CFR as a metric (although it is a poor one), the CFR has fallen from more than 6 percent on May 16 to less than 5 percent as of June 28 (see Worldometers data here).
  • Demographic shift in who is getting infected. At the beginning of the pandemic, what we observed in the United States that it was those 60 and older disproportionately contracting COVID-19. Using Florida as an example, the median age dropped from 65 in March to 35 in June. On the whole, 43 percent of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. took place in long-term care facilities. As the Heritage Foundation reminds us, the age demographics matter a lot when it comes to a serious illness. Younger adults are not immune from contracting a serious case of COVID-19, but the probability of a severe case or death for this demographic is much less likely. What has happened in recent weeks is that younger adults are accounting for a greater share of those infected. With more young adults contracting COVID-19, it is likely that the incident of severe cases and deaths vis-à-vis the IFR will be lower. While there is concern for younger adults infecting the elderly (which means we can have stricter protocols for long-term care facilities instead of another round of lockdowns), this shift is accompanied by other positive trends.
  • Decline in new hospitalizations. According to The Covid Tracking Project, which provides nationwide and state-level COVID data, there has been an increase in overall hospitalizations. At the same time, we have to be mindful of the number of new hospitalizations. Even when accounting for a two-week lag between infection and symptom onset, the CDC still shows an overall decline in new hospitalizations since mid-April. Looking at the CDC’s interpretation of hospitalization forecasting, most of the models show a nationwide plateau of new hospitalizations in the upcoming weeks, although certain states (e.g., Arizona, California) are expected to see an increase.
  • Decrease in COVID-19 Deaths. It is more difficult to draw conclusions from the death data since it can take several weeks between infection and death. At the same time, what CDC data show us is that there has been a decline in all age demographics from the April 18 peak.
  • Our ability to treat COVID-19 has improved. Aside from adequate hospital capacity in most jurisdictions, we preliminarily have two treatments that show at least some promise: remdesivir and dexamethasone. We also have greater knowledge on how to treat COVID-19 in terms of treatment protocol (e.g., how to better use ventilators and their limits, prone positioning). I expect preparedness, palliative care, and treatment to only improve as time passes.

Continue reading…

From Libertarian Jew, here.

Corona Likely Man-Made…

– The most logical explanation is that it comes from a laboratory

The well-known Norwegian virologist Birger Sørensen and his colleagues have examined the corona virus. They believe it has certain properties which would not evolve naturally. These conclusions are politically controversial, but in this interview he shares the findings behind the headlines.

PUBLISERT  SIST OPPDATERT 

“I understand that this is controversial, but the public has a legitimate need to know, and it is important that it is possible to freely discuss alternate hypotheses on how the virus originated” Birger Sørensen starts to explain when Minerva visits him in his office one morning in Oslo.

Despite the explosiveness of his statements and research, Sørensen remains calm and collected.

Sørensen has been a point of controversy ever since former MI6 director Richard Dearlove cited a yet to be published article by Sørensen and his colleagues in an interview with The Daily Telegraph. The article claims that the virus that causes Covid-19 most likely has not emerged naturally.

“It’s a shame that there has already been so much talk about this, because I have yet to publish the article where I put forward my analysis”, Sørensen says in the form of an exasperated sigh.

Together with his colleagues, Angus Dalgleish and Andres Susrud have authored an article that looks into the most plausible explanations regarding the origins of the novel coronavirus. The article builds upon an already published article in the Quarterly Review of Biophysics that describes newly discovered properties in the virus spike protein. The authors are still in dialogue with scientific journals regarding an upcoming publication of the article.

News outlets are thus confronted with a difficult question: Are the findings and arguments Sørensen and his colleagues put forward of a sufficiently high quality to be presented and discussed in the public sphere? Sørensen explains that they in their dialogue with scientific journals are encountering a certain reluctance to publishing the article – without, however, proper scientific objections. Minerva has read a draft of the article, and has after an overall assessment decided that the findings and arguments do deserve public debate, and that this discussion cannot depend entirely on the publication process of scientific journals.

In this interview with Minerva, Sørensen therefore puts forward his hypothesis on why it is highly unlikely that the coronavirus emerged naturally.

On May 18th, WHO decided to conduct an inquiry into the coronavirus epidemic in China. Sørensen believes that it is important that this inquiry looks into new and alternate explanations for how the virus originated, beyond the already well-known suggestion that the virus originated in the Wuhan Seafood Market.

“There are very few who still believe that the epidemic started there, so as of today we have no good answers on how the epidemic started. Then we must also dare to look at more controversial, alternative explanations for the origin,” Sørensen says.

Birger Sørensen and one of his co-authors, Angus Dalgleish, are already known as HIV researchers par excellence.

In 2008, Sørensen’s work came to international attention when he launched a new immunotherapy for HIV. Angus Dalgleish is the professor at St. George’s Medical School in London who became world famous in 1984 after having discovered a novel receptor that the HIV virus uses to enter human cells.

The purpose of the work Sørensen and his colleagues have done on the novel coronavirus, has been to produce a vaccine. And they have taken their experience in trialling HIV vaccines with them to analyse the coronavirus more thoroughly, in order to make a vaccine that can protect against Covid-19 without major side effects.

Continue reading…

From Minerva, here.

הרב קאפח: מנהג תימן שלא לבנות בית של אבנים בחו”ל

“..הדברים נראים ברורים: מאז ומעולם לא פסקה עלייה מתימן לירושלם בפרט, וליתר חלקי הארץ בכלל, ויוצאי תימן לא חדלו מבין תושבי ירושלם במשך כל הזמנים, כי בכל הדורות ראו היהודים את עצמם בתימן רק ארעיים וזמניים שם, ומשום כך לא בנו להם בתי אבן, ולא תקעו יתד נאמנה המשרישה את ישיבתם שם. אף העשירים אשר בקלות יחסית יכלו לבנות בתי אבן, ללא מאמץ רב, לא עשו את זאת, לפי שראו בכך יאוש מן הגאולה, והרי חז״ל אמרו, כי בתחילת דינו של אדם לפני הקב״ה שואלין אותו: “צפית לישועה?” (שבת לא, א׳), ואם הצפייה תהיה רק אמירת מלים בפה, ומעשה בהיפך, הרי יהיו בכלל מי שנאמר בהם: “בפיו ובשפתיו כבדוני, ולבו רחק ממני”(ישעיה כט, יג). דכירנא כד הוינא טליא, אחד העשירים החריגים בעירנו בנה לעצמו בית אבני גזית, ולעזה עליו כל העיר שהוא כופר בביאת המשיח. וכיוון שכן, כלומר שבתימן ראו היהודים את עצמם זמניים שם, אין פלא שלא פסקה עלייה מתימן לירושלם במשך כל  הדורות. ושגור היה בפי העולים גם בימינו, שלא היו אומרים נעלה ארץ-ישראל, אלא נעלה לירושלם, כי ירושלם היתה משאת נפשם, והיא היתה כל מגמת כספם וכמהם, ואע״פ שאין בידינו לעת עתה הוכחות על רציפות התישבות התימנים בירושלם, הרי כלל הוא אצלנו – “אין לא ראינו ראיה” (זבחים כג, ב). והנקודות הפזורות, המתגלות בדילוגי הדורות השונים, מהוות גילוי ועקבות לרציפות

מקור: הרב יוסף קאפח, כתבים ח״ב, עמ׳ 1016

(הובא ב”ליקוטים מדברי רבנן ותלמידיהון לתשועת מלחמת ששת-הימים וליום שחרור ירושלים” מאת הרב שי הירש, עמ’ 22-23)