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Aliyah: Why Your Rabbi Can’t Make the Decision Instead of You

Accepted at Last

Chaim Ekstein, Romema, Yerushalayim

The plane tickets for our move from Monroe, New York to Eretz Yisroel were booked well in advance, on Chanukah of 5780 (2019), before anyone thought about corona. The original date for our flight was July 1, 2020, but it was pushed off time after time due to coronavirus regulations. For two months we were living out of our packed boxes. It happened more than once that my kids would ask me in the morning if we were leaving that day, and only later in the day would I have an answer for them: the flight had been postponed once again.

We finally left for the airport after the sixth time our flight was rescheduled. When we finished with check-in and were finally ready to go to the gate, we saw a sign that the gate was a thirty-minute walk away. The problem was that the flight was in only forty minutes, and the doors usually close fifteen to twenty minutes before take-off. We started walking quickly, and five minutes later we heard an announcement on the loudspeaker, “Delta airlines paging a group of nine.” That was us. They announced that if we didn’t board soon, they would take off our luggage. After all these weeks of anticipation, would we be let down once again, and at the last minute? I cannot begin to describe the feeling.

In those last fifteen minutes before we did B”H make it to the gate and board the plane, we felt as if maybe Eretz Yisroel was rejecting us. We were thinking, why doesn’t Eretz Yisroel want us? It just didn’t make any sense to us. I now realize that these hurdles were actually gifts from HaShem, granted to us so that we will appreciate Eretz Yisroel even more, and be thankful to HaShem for helping us overcome them. This appreciation and thankfulness led us to designate the day of our arrival as a new family Yom Tov, to celebrate our “yetzi’as America.”

It all started over twelve years ago, with a 10-day visit to Eretz Yisroel. It helped me see that a real and physical Eretz Yisroel exists “al pi p’shat,” and its existence is not to be understood only on some deeper, mystical level, just as with other mitzvos. For example, the daled minim may allude to different things, i.e. the vital organs, the different types of people etc., but this does not negate the literal aspect of them being four physical objects which HaShem’s will is that we should take on Sukkos. The mystical aspect of tzitzis does not minimize the “simple” act of wearing it to literally perform HaShem’s mitzvah, and we can be happy about that, too. I felt the same way about Eretz Yisroel; not perceiving it as also a tangible reality – HaShem’s Chosen physical piece of Land, where He wants us to be – is really to be missing out.

For the past twelve years, at every Shabbos table, the subject was Eretz Yisroel. When we would get to the end of the Pesach seder, I would explain “l’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim” in a most literal sense. During this period, I took my family four times to Eretz Yisroel for a few weeks. Each time, we left with such a longing and broken hearts that we weren’t staying. Every time we did renovations in our house, we felt sorry that it wasn’t in a house of our own in Eretz Yisroel.

I began to appreciate the challenge of Avraham Avinu. At first I thought, what’s the big deal? How is “lech lecha” a nisayon? Anyone who would get a directive from HaShem to go somewhere would surely do so. I then realized that it very well may be that HaShem did direct people to go, but it was only Avraham that actually took the next step and went. “Vayelech Avram,” that’s the chiddush here. Though nowhere near the magnitude of Avraham’s challenge, I felt many times that I couldn’t get to that next step, until HaShem gave me the strength to come and be part of history, to be a part of this Geulah process. I believe that we got here only in the zechus of the countless tefillos of our ancestors over the past two thousand years.

As a business consultant, I tell people that if they want to be successful, they should speak to successful people. If you want to be a good plumber, speak to a successful plumber. If you want to be successful in real-estate, speak to someone successful in real-estate, not to a plumber.

I understood that this concept applies to aliyah as well. Hearing ten reasons why aliyah cannot be successful from people who didn’t succeed, would not help us succeed in making aliyah. We understood that we didn’t need or want support groups comprised of people who may be interested in aliyah but have not succeeded as of yet. Certainly, asking people point blank in shul (who are still in chutz laAretz) what they think about aliyah was not going to foster success. What was important was to create our own support network comprised of the people who did succeed.

As author of an Amazon bestseller, “Escape from the Prison of Comfort & Create the Life of Your Dreams,” I’ll let you in on another tip. People may be stuck in their status quo, prevented from changing jobs or relocating, including to Eretz Yisroel. They think they need a clear picture of the future, with a plan they’re able to follow through to the letter, without which they will not proceed. To move forward though, you might just have to jump in. Of course, you must be responsible and address whatever needs to be addressed, but must not forget to trust in HaShem and that He created you as well as everything you need to succeed.

Responsibility

Before making the move to Eretz Yisroel, I went to consult with a chashuve rav in Monsey. He told me why such a move cannot work; the school system is different, the culture is different, and there are so many other challenges. I countered that I did not come to take his advice on whether to make the move; that has already been decided.

He then literally jumped off his chair, and said to me. “Wow! I am so jealous of you! How can I help you?”

I then realized that people really do want to help. It’s just that they cannot take the responsibilities that people want to throw off of themselves. These kinds of decisions have to come from you; it’s you that has to decide that the reward of living in Eretz Yisroel is worth you taking on the challenges. Once you do that, people will be glad to help.

The Murderers In White Coats and HXC

AMA Lied – How Many Died?

By Brian C. Joondeph, M.D.

The American Medical Association has been adamantly against hydroxychloroquine as a therapeutic for COVID for the past year. Just a few days before the presidential election they reversed course, reversing their opposition. Did they suddenly realize HCQ might have benefit in certain patient groups or were they lying for the past year? How many individuals died as a result of being denied potential lifesaving treatment?

The AMA is synonymous with organized medicine, despite myriad specialty societies that may better represent the needs of its member physicians. In fact, only 12 percent of practicing physicians belong to the AMA due to concerns that the AMA is more interested in its own finances and politics than the concerns of doctors.

When the AMA talks, media and the public listen, due to their perceived clout. Last spring, the AMA issued a statement critical of hydroxychloroquine as it was being used off-label in the treatment of COVID, not FDA-approved for this purpose with supposed “dangerous side effects.”

Quietly at the end of October, the AMA issued a new statement, conveniently overlooked by the media, giving the green light to doctors prescribing HCQ to their COVID patients.

RESOLVED, that our American Medical Association rescind its statement calling for physicians to stop prescribing hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine until sufficient evidence becomes available to conclusively illustrate that the harm associated with use outweighs benefit early in the disease course.

An updated statement clarifying our support for a physician’s ability to prescribe an FDA-approved medication for off label use, if it is in her/his best clinical judgement, with specific reference to the use of hydroxychloroquine and combination therapies for the treatment of the earliest stage of COVID-19.

What changed since last spring? How many COVID deaths could have been prevented if doctors, using their professional and clinical judgement, could have prescribed HCQ without fear of ostracization or loss of their jobs?

HCQ has been around since the 1950s, approved as a malarial preventative and for treatment of lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. It is relatively safe, except for the one in a thousand with a rare cardiac arrhythmia, easily identified by a pretreatment EKG. In many African countries, HCQ is available without a prescription for malaria prevention.

The problem arose when President Trump touted HCQ as a “potential therapeutic,” based on early reports of doctors prescribing it with good results. He did not tell anyone to take it but held it out as hope to a country suffering under a pandemic with lockdowns, quarantines, hospitalizations, and deaths.

Trump also took HCQ himself, prescribed by the White House medical team. If Trump claimed drinking water was healthy, the media and medical establishment would have denounced it, citing cases of people dying from drinking too much water.

A perfect example was Fox News crank Neil Cavuto screaming how hydroxy “will kill you.” This was based on a flawed VA study finding no benefit for HCQ in a severely ill cohort of patients, and a higher death rate among those receiving HCQ. This was a retrospective study which did not address the possibility that HCQ was given to sicker patients, who were more likely to die anyway.

Prestigious medical journals, Lancet and New England Journal, retracted published studies raising alarms about HCQ due to bogus study data. It seemed there was a jihad against HCQ from the medical establishment, supported by the media, simply because the Orange Man suggested it.

Was the concern solely over off-label use of drugs? In my world, Avastin has been successfully used off-label for 15 years for the treatment of macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy, despite FDA approval only for cancer and a black box warning about gastrointestinal perforation, wound healing, and hemorrhage.

In relative terms, HCQ is a far safer drug compared to Avastin. Ketamine is another old drug similar to HCQ, FDA-approved in 1970 as a general anesthetic. Yet it is increasingly being used off-label to treat severe depression, anxiety, and PTSD. As a general anesthetic, it certainly can kill you if used improperly, but used under the considered judgment of a physician, it can literally save lives. Neil Cavuto hasn’t yet offered his expert medical opinion on ketamine.

There have been 187 hydroxy studies, 122 of which were peer-reviewed. 100 percent of these studies reported positive effects for early treatment of COVID, meaning, for those not yet in the hospital, and certainly not on a ventilator. These studies were performed and reported this year, while the AMA stayed mum, standing by their admonition against HCQ, until their “oh by the way” report at the end of October.

The AMA’s about-face is curious in terms of timing. They could have tempered their initial remarks last summer, when the “America’s Frontline Doctors” group was promoting HCQ, azithromycin, and zinc as an effective early treatment for COVID. All three components of their cocktail were off label. In fact, at the time there was no approved therapeutic for COVID and many people could have been treated earlier, potentially keeping them out of the hospital or worse.

Perfect is the enemy of good. Prospective randomized clinical trials would have been great, but they take time. Why not let physicians use their “best clinical judgment” as the recent AMA statement recommends?

Instead, the AMA waited until Oct. 30 to announce a more reasoned position, not coincidently just a few days before the presidential election. Democrats and the media blamed Trump for every COVID illness and death, accusing Trump of “misleading” on HCQ, as a prominent campaign issue.

Continue reading…

From American Thinker, here.

Rabbi Pruzansky Looks At the REAL America

Third World

Posted on December 17, 2020

      I have been fortunate to visit dozens of countries on almost every continent on this planet, and the standard advisory when visiting any country that is part of the third world is: “don’t drink the water.” Too often the water is contaminated, unclean, unfiltered or insufficiently so, or just doesn’t rest well in a first world stomach. Tourists live off bottled water and hotels routinely provide bottled water (the good ones, for free) in every room. It is the price of visiting these countries and enjoying their other, non-potable, attractions.

Then I realized that for many years most people I know do not drink the water in New Jersey or many other places in the United States. That is why the bottled water business is a $7,000,000,000 (that’s billion) industry in America. It might not be a lot compared to other industries –it is half of what was spent on the 2020 presidential election and a third of what Americans spend on chocolate – but it means that people would rather pay good money, billions of dollars, for something that they can get for free right from the tap. There are very few, if any, similar choices made by a consumer.

What about infrastructure? It is not uncommon in the Third World to travel on potholed roads, rundown highways, and transit systems that are crowded and inefficient (although European trains are a marvel of efficiency and exactitude). Bridges and tunnels are often in disrepair and collapses are not unknown. Railroad tracks always seem to be on their last legs.

Is the United States really that different? The subways in many cities compare unfavorably with the third world. Highways, bridges and tunnels are in such need of upgrade and modernization that it is a perennial promise by the politicians to spend hundreds of billions to do it, and never do. That little seems to be done is not only because politicians need something to promise in the future and the union demands grossly inflate the cost of any project but mainly because until anything breaks down completely, why fix it? That money can be spent elsewhere on something new and shiny.

Likewise, the urban areas in third world countries are teeming with slums, old buildings and neighborhoods, and, too often, garbage and rubbish in the streets. These areas abound with dysfunctional families, aimless children, and poor educational frameworks. While the American poor have standards of living that far exceed that of the third world poor, the rest of the description is far too accurate. A slum is a slum wherever it is, and some slums seem to exist permanently. The inner cities wherever they are located remain places of high crime (and misdemeanors), homelessness, social maladies and disorders that seem to defy resolution. In the US as in the third world, there are areas of great opulence that are a short ride from places of great poverty and deprivation. The only difference is that the US has many more places of great opulence than one would find in the third world.

What else characterizes a third world country? Typically, one finds debilitated social and political systems and even the latter is often tenuously held together by a strong man. In the third world, one expect to see lawlessness, mobs and riots in the streets, with the homes and businesses of the successful looted by the unsuccessful and embittered. One would expect the commission of crimes that will or won’t be prosecuted based on the personal whims of the prosecutor. One expects the judiciary to be so corrupt that it places its political predilections over the rule of law. Justice itself is not just illusory but it is altogether capricious, a veritable gamble as to who wins and who loses. The mob drives disfavored politicians from office and places its favorites into office. The government just prints money and distributes it in order to placate the people, oblivious to the fact that soon that money will be worth less and less.

In the third world, it is quite common that the wealthy people are those who cozy up to government power brokers. Cronyism is rampant, sweetheart deals, contracts and monopolies are the norm, and politicians, oligarchs and their media acolytes are often interchangeable. There is a revolving door in which jobs and perks are exchanged regularly. The media, controlled by the elites, suppresses dissent, breaks and cancels its enemies, and sets the agenda for the society. Cabals in the establishment, usually military or intelligence, plot from within and attempt to overthrow any leader who does not conform to their wishes. Dissidents are cast out of civil society unless they do penance, often embracing views they previously found repugnant in order to regain entry into the world of the elites, and having to pay a premium price to do so. The crimes of the disfavored lead to their excision and incarceration while the crimes of the elites are overlooked, minimized or covered up. The rich and powerful get away with it.

Well, how well does that describe modern America? Almost perfectly. The mobs and rioters intimidated and continue to intimidate decent people. A good percentage of Biden voters did so out of fear that the streets would explode and burn (again) if Biden lost. These threats were not subtle in the least. Cities across America deployed their security agents in force on Election Day lest the mob find the results distasteful. (As a general rule, Republicans don’t burn down buildings or businesses. Why would they? They own the buildings and businesses.) In many cities, property crimes, assaults and trespassing committed by the mobsters were not prosecuted. Literally, people committed crimes by the thousands and got away with it only because their politics of the rioters and the prosecutors corresponded. Some rioters were arrested, released without bail, and then arrested again for more crimes, and released again. Black supremacists are disgracefully hailed even as white supremacists are justifiably castigated.

In New York City, police solve crimes at a rate below 30%, which is actually astounding. Criminals just get away with it, and the average citizen does not realize the extent to which they get away with it. Dissidents on moral issues have their religious liberties threatened and curtailed, even as the margin of victory in the Supreme Court (their last protection) is extremely narrow. Congress is as dysfunctional as any third world parliament, with the only saving grace is that Congressmen have not yet come to blows on the floor of the House or Senate, something quite common in the third world. Elements within the CIA and FBI plotted against a sitting president, and few if any will be brought to justice. Money is printed and distributed by the trillions, which is not to say it is fairly or equitably distributed, or distributed to those who need it most rather than to the oligarchs and political cronies of the powerful.

And what better characterizes a third world country than election fraud? It is almost synonymous with the third world, as is the weaselly, politician/media cliché repeatedly uttered of “no evidence of widespread fraud.” Left open is why there should be any fraud at all, as well as a precise definition of “widespread.” Note this well: if 99 ballots out of 100 are legitimate, and 1 out of 100 is bogus, then most people would not construe that as “widespread” fraud. After all, it is only 1% of the vote. Yet, in the three key states of Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan, Biden defeated Trump by less than 1% of the vote. Widespread? Hardly. Determinative? Absolutely. And if we expand the definition of “no evidence of widespread fraud” to 3% of the vote (meaning that the election was 97% honest) then crunch the numbers and Trump won a smashing victory. I accept the outcome, but please do not insult our intelligence with the vapid banality of “no widespread fraud.” And at least acknowledge as well the oddity that all accusations of fraud went in one direction, not both.

It is sad that the United States, to too great an extent, is becoming a third world country in all the aspects that define a third world country. The great irony is that, notwithstanding this political and moral collapse, only the United States could have produced the Coronavirus vaccine in such record time, and only the United States has the material and constitutional heft to lead the world, to be an example for other nations, and to fight the evil that persists in the world especially in countries antagonized by the American ethos. The United States has many places of astonishing beauty and prosperity, and successful people have long segregated themselves into communities that are gated, literally or figuratively. But Americans can also easily be fooled by the glitz, the glamour, the trappings of modernity and technology, and the soothing sounds of social media that indulge the worst facets of our nature and few of the positive ones. America is filled with soporific distractions, the bread and circuses of the Romans that lulled people into thinking that all is good and getting better even as every feature of civil society was breaking down.

As Romans could tell you, nothing lasts forever. It is easy to get complacent, and easier, and worse, to deny what is happening in front of us because the consequences are too unpleasant to consider. “All are considered blind until G-d opens their eyes,” especially diehard partisans. Those who notice this should take it to heart, ignore the mindless cheerleading and empty platitudes, and draw the appropriate conclusions.

From Rabbi Pruzansky, here.

(Democratic) Politicians Are the Most EXPENDABLE Item Imaginable

Whatever the definition of Corona\British\Nazi-era “Essential Worker”, surely in the democratic model of government, “zero-price-good” politicians aren’t it.

Isn’t the whole idea behind democracy, that you can forever have continuity of government (ugh), even if you had less than a minyan left in the whole continent since the suits mystically represent the majority\Deep State? אין ציבור מת and all.

In a democracy, “Aaaaaaanyone can become Chief Gangster (read: President)”, right? So, what’s the official propaganda excuse behind providing cheap, interchangeable screws with such expensive personal security details at the tax slaves’ expense? If one screw goes, get another one from the “Birgiya” (Hebrew for screw cabinet). Doesn’t even need to be the same size. (Think Sharon>Olmert.)

Continuing in the same vein, why are assassinations\expirations of ministers (like Rechavam Ze’evi) or prime ministers (like Yitzchak Rabin) ever noticed let alone commemorated, excuse my blasphemy?!

Don’t know why assassins even bother. Just promote his vice. Vice gets shot, too? Now promote his vice (To be clear, by “vice” I mean the position-holder and not the habit…). What, the whole fungible chain of command was busted? No problemo! No gridlock, even. Surely there are protocols for such glorious occasions?

(“Jew murders Jew” is hardly the main point about Rabin, because even the “holy” mortar firing upon the Altalena, was um, well…)

Even kings, chosen for supposedly unique qualifications, can be swapped out: Zecharyahu, then Shalum (whom I don’t grasp why the Malbim Hoshea 8:4 praises), then Menachem ben Gadi. If you stayed away from the “Reshut” and had anything better to do than follow the stupid Mikveh news at the time, you might never even notice a change.

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.

And why aren’t all Knesset members injected with the dangerously under-tested Corona vaccination post-haste, instead of frontline doctors, who might actually know something useful?

And why, when the state of Israel controlled only West Jerusalem, did anyone, except the pols themselves, think the Knesset should be moved to Tel Aviv so as not to be “too close” to the border?

“A government of laws and not of men.”

Why, oh why, oh why?!

Maybe one of our readers can offer us dropouts a civics class to illuminate this puzzle.

P.S., Do politicians get personal Divine Providence, or just Hashgacha for the “species”, like their simian relatives?

HYEHUDI ~ Some Recently Popular Articles Among Domestic Readers

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