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Religious Zealots Have Upon Whom to Rely… RABBI A.Y. KOOK!

Excerpted story:
Rav Kook related the following story one holiday evening in his sukkah. The incident took place in Jaffa, where Rav Kook served as chief rabbi from 1904 to 1914. One Shabbat day, a secular photographer came and disturbed the Sabbath peace in a religious neighborhood. In total disregard for the local religious sensibilities, he set up his tripod and camera in the middle of the street and began taking pictures.
This public desecration of the Sabbath deeply angered the local residents. One man who was particularly incensed by the photographer’s insensitivity took a pail of water and thoroughly soaked the Sabbath-desecrater. Naturally, the photographer was indignant. He was so confident in the justice of his cause that he registered a complaint against the water-douser — at the beit din (religious court) of the rabbi of Jaffa, Rav Kook.
Rav Kook told the photographer, “I see that you fail to understand the severity of desecrating the Sabbath in public, but you should realize that your action was a serious affront to the community. You entered a neighborhood of Sabbath-observers and offended them deeply.
“Of course, the correct course of action for the residents would have been to rebuke you verbally. Perhaps you would have understood the seriousness of your actions and stopped. Had that man consulted with me first, I would have advised him not to throw water on you.
“However, he didn’t ask, but reacted spontaneously. You should know that on occasion, such impulsive reactions are justified. When people disregard societal norms and cross accepted boundaries, regardless of the implications for others, it is often the spontaneous reaction that most effectively prevents future abuse.
“Such an occasion took place when the Israelites were in the desert and Pinchas responded, not accordingly to the normative Halachah, but as a zealot: “Kena’im pogim bo” (‘Zealots punish them’ — Num. 25:6-8; Sanhedrin 82a). If Pinchas had asked beforehand, he would have been instructed not to kill Zimri. But since his act was done sincerely and served to prevent future violations, his zealous deed was approved after the fact.”
Of course, the context is important; see the whole within!

Sure, There’s a Problem. It’s Just Not What You Think…

Pandemics Aren’t What They Used to Be

If this were 1983, before the invention of the PCR test, there would be no possible rationale for the unending lockdown in Israel and for laws against running yeshivas, davening in groups, or visiting rebbes, friends, or succos. Deaths would not provide a reason because there haven’t been enough of them. 1,400 deaths over 8 months with each casualty being an average of 80 years old, the majority with other serious medical conditions, does not justify a lockdown of all of society while more than 4x that amount have died from diseases caused by cigarette smoking and about as many die each year from the flu. (In as many as a quarter of the Israeli COVID deaths, COVID wasn’t even a contributing factor but simply present to some degree in the body.) The count of sick people doesn’t justify it because there are about 800 of them at any one time, many with other conditions, and most of the 800 are the same people from month to month.

The alleged justification is the growth of the alleged “infection rate.” What determines whether people are infected? It’s not a traditional blood test. It’s not symptoms. It’s the polymerase chain reaction test.  PCR for short. PCR is a method used to rapidly make millions to billions of copies of a specific DNA sample, allowing scientists to take a very small sample of DNA and amplify it to a large enough amount to study in detail. It was not intended to be used to diagnose disease in a person. It’s purpose was research. As biologist Dr. Beda Stadler, the former director of the Institute for Immunology at the University of Bern, tells us, “So if we do a PCR corona test on an immune person, it is not a virus that is detected, but a small shattered part of the viral genome. The test comes back positive for as long as there are tiny shattered parts of the virus left. Correct: Even if the infectious viruses are long dead, a corona test can come back positive, because the PCR method multiplies even a tiny fraction of the viral genetic material enough [to be detected].”

What you read in the press over and over, what you hear from the politicians over and over, is that the infection is spreading. This claim is all based on ignorance about the PCR test. 80% of people who test positive show zero symptoms. 18% show minor symptoms that last a few days, like a good old-fashioned cold. The PCR test only tells you of exposure to a family of viruses called coronavirus. It doesn’t necessarily even tell you of exposure to COVID19. The PCR test in the hands of politicians and politically minded medical appointees is like a machine gun in the hands of the Hutu militia in Rwanda. It’s not something they could ever develop on their own, and in their mad hands it’s lethal.

Another dangerous invention was the change in definition of the word pandemic. Prior to September 2009, it meant a disease “against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness.” (May 1, 2009, World Health Organization)

In September of 2009, the WHO changed the definition: “A disease epidemic occurs when there are more cases of that disease than normal. A pandemic is a worldwide epidemic of a disease.”

That is quite a difference. The traditional definition warns you of impending mass death. The new definition by the hipsters at the WHO can mean simply that more people than normal will catch a cold.

So they just toss around the word pandemic now and the average person goes by the definition that was in use since before his great-grandfather was born.  Between misuse of the PCR test and misuse of the word pandemic, the human race is in quite a panic. And panic is always double in Israel.

We are exposed to viruses all the time. Trillions of them are in the body, which valiantly fights them off. This is the first time in history that a normal physical process is termed sickness. The body is quite a miracle. God equipped it to do amazing things, like fight off disease. What’s happening here is that atheists, who don’t understand religion or medicine, whose entire mentality is shaped by the military to see every problem as war are acting and ordering us to act as if it’s 1973 and the Egyptian army is coming. Lockdown is what the military conducted in the West Bank during the Second Intifada. This is all these people know. Militarism. It’s a religion for them and they have found an excuse to impose it finally on the entire country, half of klal Yisroel.

What kind of epidemic is there when there are no shiva posters on the street, no hearses, thank God. If you don’t know anybody who knows anybody who died or was severely ill then you don’t have an epidemic. The government of Israel originally told us there’d be 10,000 dead by April. So that didn’t happen. They told us 3 months ago there’d be 1,000 seriously ill within 3 weeks. 3 weeks has come and gone 4 times. There’s 850 seriously sick. Nebach yes, pandemic no.

The concept of pikuach nefesh has parameters. Do you get in a car? You are endangering people. Do you have stairs in your house? Danger. 12,000 Americans die each year falling down the stairs. Do you serve chicken to guests? Danger. People choke. 5,000 a year choke to death. Where does it end?

What do we do? That’s a tricky one, that’s a question for gadolim. But I can tell you this much, we should realize we are being had, tricked, lied to. Is shmad, religious persecution, their intention? I don’t know, but it is the result.

What results also is a destruction of the economy and society. We could have built 100 hospitals for what the lockdowns are costing us.  A new hospital costs around $100 million. The lockdowns are costing billions. Many parts of Israel are an hour or more from the nearest hospital. A friend of mine died from complications caused by a stroke that could have been stopped had he lived closer to a hospital. I have another friend whose father died of a preventable heart attack, but he was avoiding doctors because of COVID19. According to world-renowned scientist Dr. John Ioannidis of Stanford University, “the health care system was severely damaged in many places because of the measures taken.” He says that the overreaction to the virus is putting millions of lives at risk worldwide. Reportedly, suicides are on the rise in Israel, particularly among lonely and isolated elderly people. Spousal abuse is on the rise too. I have several friends that are out of money and credit. They literally cannot buy groceries. The government will not let them work. It was bad enough when the new corporatocracy drove many people to live paycheck to paycheck, but now they don’t even have that. Even communist Russia gave each person a job. This is worse than communism. And these are people that did have some savings, but the lockdowns have gone on for months.

Some people who are not thinking very deeply into this crisis act as if lockdowns are the way to play it safe.  Of all the blunt and unimaginative proposals for a solution, a lockdown would have to be the most blunt and least imaginative of them all. We’ll just stop living. How’s that for a solution? It’s like divorce being a solution for the problems of marriage. We’ll just end the marriage. How about that? Simple.

Not so simple for the children. Mass destruction is not the solution to your problems. Lockdowns are the equivalent of divorce, suicide, and atom bombs. Only the guy dropping the bomb doesn’t see the problem. To him it’s a pretty cloud. Wait until he lands his plane and sees what he did.

Hyehudi’s Rhetorical Triangle – Recently Read

Although the posting frequency is lower (and will remain so for the next few months), Baruch Hashem, we have no fewer visitors.

Here is what’s been popular lately:

  1. ספר ‘מענה לאגרות’ נגד שו”ת אגרות משה
  2. The Lubavitcher Rebbe Believed in the Myth of ‘American Exceptionalism’
  3. Abandoning the Priestly Blessing in the Diaspora – Why Do You Look So GUILTY?!
  4. חדש: קונטרס לכשרות בית מקדש תחת הקרקע
  5. ספר שדי תפוחים – שני חלקים: אוצר תיקוני עוונות
  6. ‘Liberated Parents, Liberated Children’ and Child Abuse
  7. A Pandemic of Mask Misinformation
  8. תיקוני תשובת המשקל של האריז”ל עבור חטאי עריות – חלק שלישי
  9. Did You Know Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan’s ‘Living Torah’ Is Online?
  10. בד”ץ שערי שלום Badaz Shaarey Shalom

Enjoy the good ones twice…

Hyehudi’s RECENTLY Popular Pieces

Based on Google Analytics:

  1. בד”ץ שערי שלום Badaz Shaarey Shalom
  2. Did You Know Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan’s ‘Living Torah’ Is Online?
  3. קונטרס התקנות משנת תשמ”ה – לרומם קדושת ישראל בישיבות
  4. Patach Eliyahu – A New English Translation
  5. ספר ‘מענה לאגרות’ נגד שו”ת אגרות משה
  6. Is the US President Mostly a Figurehead of the Deep State?
  7. תיקוני תשובת המשקל לפגם הברית ועוד – חלק שני
  8. ‘The Commandments, Statutes, and Ordinances… That They May Do Them IN THE LAND’
  9. ‘Liberated Parents, Liberated Children’ and Child Abuse
  10. מטמוני ארץ Matmoney Eretz

Enjoy!

There Is Orthodox and Then There Is Jewish…

Assimilated Orthodox Jews

Assimilation is like a virus in many ways. It spreads primarily from close contact with those who are already infected, though casual contact is also dangerous. Carriers may exhibit a variety of symptoms, and may even be asymptomatic. Many get away with only mild cases of the disease – and tend to downplay it as a result – but many others suffer severe cases that lead to permanent damage and even spiritual death.

More parallels can be drawn, but let’s proceed to the main point.

We tend to think of assimilated Jews as those who have married gentiles. Until recently, that was the “test”; assimilation was equated with intermarriage. Most people would agree that Jews who are indistinguishable from gentiles, even if they marry another such Jew, can fairly be described as assimilated, though their chance of recovery is significantly greater.

The truth is that assimilation is a subtle and sinister disease. Even Jews who keep Shabbos, are strict about kashrus, and maintain the exterior trappings of a Torah-observant lifestyle can be infected with it. These cases are the most difficult to detect, which also make them the most difficult to cure. The intermarried Jew knows he is not living in the ways of his ancestors; he can have a sudden awakening and return. The assimilated Orthodox Jew can hardly be convinced by sage or even prophet that he is not in perfect health.

Here are four tests, in no particular order, to determine if you are an assimilated Orthodox Jew.

1) You live outside of Israel, with no intention to change that, and teach your children how important it is not to make a chillul Hashem.

The latter clause is not necessary for the assimilation aspect, but it sheds light on it. There is no greater chillul Hashem than the Jewish people living outside of Israel. This is irrespective of whether Moshiach has arrived, or the quality of life inside or outside of Israel. The definition of galus is the Jewish people exiled from Israel. It is a greater chillul Hashem for Jews to live in a pristine religious bubble outside of Israel than for them to live among idol worshipers inside their own land. This is because the banishment of Jews from their land is proof to the nations of the world that God has abandoned the Jewish people, or that He cannot protect them. This idea is emphasized throughout Sefer Tehillim.

So if you live in a nice Jewish community in the Diaspora and worry about making a kiddush Hashem in your interactions with gentiles, consider this. Your very presence there is the ultimate chillul Hashem; nothing else compares to it, and no amount of good behavior will make up for it. If this does not bother you, and you are not actively striving to rectify it, then you are an assimilated Orthodox Jew.

2) You take moral cues from the goyim.

Morality is not subjective, nor does morality evolve or progress from one generation to the next as does technology. That belief is incompatible with belief in God – Who alone determines what is right and what is wrong – and the Torah, where these determinations are immortalized.

Everyone lives by some type of moral code – even criminals, gangs, terrorists, and those who profess the vapid belief that there are no rules. As long as the world is populated by more than one person, there will always be rules. The only question is whether these rules will be based on the Torah, or invented by man. The morality of any particular rule or system is determined strictly by its fidelity to God’s objective truth.

Our very existence as Orthodox Jews is for the purpose of implementing God’s complete Torah in our land and spreading the basic Noahide teachings to the rest of the world. Moral enlightenment is supposed to flow exclusively from Torah to Jew to gentile, never the reverse. Knowledge of science and art may be obtained from a variety of sources, but when it comes to morality there is only one authentic source.

Many Orthodox Jews receive moral direction from gentile society. It is no coincidence that “new understandings” of a woman’s role directly parallel gentile movements awash with atheism, socialism, and a general rebellion against tradition. Orthodox Jewish women did not wake up one day and decide they are oppressed, kept down, unappreciated, abused, and erased by a barbaric patriarchy. These ideas seeped into the Orthodox world from impure sources and gradually poisoned people’s minds. Isolated cases of real crimes against women were sensationalized and blown out of proportion to create a false impression of a corrupt system, with the goal of undermining tradition and eventually burying it completely.

Sincere, well-meaning Orthodox Jews imported an impure goyish movement with a kernel of truth to address problems in Jewish society real, exaggerated, and even fabricated. The goyim decided there were to be new understandings of right and wrong, and the Jews followed.

The same is true with such causes as vegetarianism and veganism. Their explosion in popularity among Orthodox Jews directly followed new understandings of morality among “enlightened” goyim. These goyim believe that they are morally superior to those who eat meat, to the extent that meat-eaters are referred to as murderers. They have also decided that taking the life of a plant to sustain oneself is perfectly fine, based on arbitrary considerations. They simply make it up as they go along.

Needless to say, slaughtering an animal and offering it as a sacrifice on an altar is anathema to many Orthodox Jews, who maintain they want a Bais Hamikdash but seem to have forgotten what we actually do there. It’s not a Kotel with four walls.

Orthodox Jews who believe they are more moral than the Torah and those who transmitted it to us throughout the generations, based on goyish movements, are assimilated Orthodox Jews.

The same is also true with movements pertaining to “rights” of homosexuals and their ilk. A gradual erosion within the Orthodox world from the Torah’s clear positions on these issues, to eventual sympathy and even support for that which the Torah abhors, directly mirrors the “progress” of these movements in gentile lands.

We have lost the ability to be outraged by anything anymore, except at fellow Orthodox Jews who stubbornly cling to tradition in the face of new morality. Orthodox Jews are supposed to be the leading and most outspoken voice when it comes to moral issues, clearly and proudly articulating the view of the Torah. Instead, our voice is the very last to be heard, suppressed as long as possible, and then meekly attempting to reconcile the goyish morality of the day with the Torah’s eternal teachings.

Can there be any greater sign of assimilation than that? Can there be anything more humiliating?

3) You believe interlopers in our land should be given control over any part of our land.

I recently saw a film by Ami Horowitz called Interview With A Murderer in which he interviewed a senior Hamas terrorist. He asked the Arab if abandoning any part of “Palestine” would be a breach in the promise between Allah and the Muslim people.

The Arab replied as follows: “You are talking about our rights. Why abandon your rights? There is no way that you can abandon part of your home, willingly. It belongs to all the Muslims. We are talking about the Holy Land here. It belongs to every Muslim in the world. I cannot give away, Abu Mazen cannot give away, Yasser Arafat could not give away, nobody can give away any part of it.”

If you are an Orthodox Jew, and you do not firmly echo this response, with “Jews” and the names of Jewish politicians substituted where appropriate, then you are an assimilated Orthodox Jew.

4) You have a problem with the mitzva to wipe out Amalek.

The Torah’s position on this is crystal clear. Shaul lost his kingdom and his life primarily because he took pity on Amalek. King David repeatedly emphasized his desire to pursue the enemies of the Jewish people, which are synonymous with the enemies of God, and wipe them out.

The latter is the leader we pray for three times a day, which presumably means we should vote for him in an election.

Today a great many Orthodox Jews want nothing to do with this mitzva. Since Orthodox Jews cannot simply do away with an uncomfortable or inconvenient mitzva as do their more “progressive” counterparts, they simply define them into irrelevance. Amalek is transformed from an actual nation of actual people to an idea – preferably an amorphous one – that must be abolished, particularly from inside ourselves.

See, dear gentile, we Jews are good – based on your definition, of course.

More traditional Orthodox Jews will maintain that Amalek does refer to actual human beings that we are commanded to wipe out, but we cannot possibly know who they are and we probably never will. Even if we did know who they are, due to a number of practical considerations we would not be allowed to do anything about it.

That may be true, but they say this with relief, not regret. If Eliyahu Hanavi delivered Amalek to them, gave them a sword, invited them to perform the mitzva, and assured them that no Jew would suffer for it, the Orthodox Jew would want nothing to do with it.

This Orthodox Jew is assimilated. The same Jew who would run to wear techeiles if he were confident that the opportunity to perform the mitzva had been restored should run with the same eagerness to fulfill another mitzva that has been denied us for generations. If you are an Orthodox Jew, how can you claim there is a difference? How can you desperately wish to remain exempt from a mitzva that is fundamental to achieving our national destiny? It is only through assimilation.

If you exhibit any of these symptoms, then I am afraid that you have contracted the disease of spiritual assimilation. Fortunately, with early detection and an honest assessment, the chances of a full recovery are high.

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