חנניה ווייסמאן Chananya Weissman

Dear Jewish Reader Still Stuck In America

Darkness and the Moment of Truth Redux

The article below is from two years ago, and is available at chananyaweissman.com/article.php?id=254.  My mailing list was fairly small at the time, and I wonder how many people heeded this fundamental lesson from the Torah then.
I wonder how many will heed it now.
Are we satisfied if our persecutors lighten up a little, lulling us into complacency while we remain under their evil thumb, or will we settle for nothing less than complete redemption?  Are we willing to take meaningful actions to bring that day closer, or do we have to wait for more “makkos”?  The Covid tyrants have given us a little breathing room; will we wait for their next offensive against us and be reactive, or be proactive and keep pushing back until we truly win?
More than ever, I can’t understand why any Jew with his head on straight wants to live in America anymore (the same is true for the rest of galus, but the yetzer hara to stay in America was always the strongest).  I’d love for galus Jews to give me one really good sales pitch for a Torah-true Jew to live in America right now, without changing the conversation to Israel’s shortcomings or pretending you’re adhering to some dubious oath you won’t find in the Rambam or the Shulchan Aruch. (Just admit already that was always an excuse. It’s not as if you really make monumental life decisions based on such sources.)
Safety? Getting worse by the day, and you’re hanging by a thread at this point.  Revisit the Anti-Semitism Handbook for Diaspora Jews, especially in light of government overreach these last several years, and tell me any of this is far-fetched anymore.
Cost of living?  You can’t stop complaining about it, it’s spiraling out of control, and it’s hard to argue you have it better over there anymore.  It’s a poor argument at best to stay in galus.
Quality of life?  The rat race is killing you more than your Sundays and occasional vacation can justify.
Spiritual sanctity?  Ha.  A Sodomite would blush at this point.  If you want your children to grow up with a spark of holiness — not addicted to screens, mood-altering drugs, secular values, and materialism — America is just about the last place you should want to raise them.
Israel is run by Erev Rav, some of the worst people around, but it also has the greatest amount of awesome, holy Jews per capita of anyplace in the world, it’s home, and we’re going to get through whatever judgment is coming upon the world.  America?  I wouldn’t want to be there when the shoe really drops.
Oh, and don’t think you’ll be able to “see the warning signs” and get out in time. First of all, you couldn’t see a warning sign if it was flashing neon pink right in your face. That’s the story of Jewish history.
Second of all, you’ve already gotten enough lessons about how fast airports can be closed, flights can be canceled, or travel can otherwise we severely restricted without warning.
And if you’re stuck on the wrong side of the ocean when it gets serious — and it will — don’t think the Israeli government will come and rescue you. You’ll be on your own, and that fancy home you mortgaged everything for won’t feel so safe and luxurious anymore. Assuming you can even stay there.
But don’t mind me, I’m just fear-mongering.  Life in America is great, and you have a Constitution to protect you.  You have rights!  Your community leaders cultivated great relationships with politicians and the police!  Jewish organizations are very influential and totally not corrupt!  And you took a self-defense class with your shul, you Rambo!  And anyway, Israel is even more scary!
I know that very few people will heed the warning, because that’s how it’s always been, and people haven’t gotten any smarter.  But a few might listen, and either way, I fulfilled my responsibility by saying the straight truth.
One more thing: I don’t want people to return home out of fear.  I want them to return home for all the many positive reasons.  But those who want to live in Israel for the right reasons, by and large, are here already.  The overwhelming majority of those who remain in galus do so voluntarily, they have internalized a galus mentality, and they simply don’t want to leave, no matter what.  So as shameful as it is, they will need to be terrorized into waking up.  I hope they wake up as gently as possible, but that’s the truth. Fear remains the best motivator for Jews to become homesick, and in absence of true yearning, they will be made to yearn for home the unpleasant way if that’s what it takes.
This year in Jerusalem. Dayenu.

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Woe to Those Who Call Evil ‘Good’ and Good ‘Evil’…!

The Torah on Word Games and Reality

It’s nauseating that the subject matter in this article is contested and needs to be discussed in seriousness, let alone within Israel and among “educated” Jews. Our society has sunk to such a low spiritual and intellectual state that the most basic and self-evident truths are denied in favor of fantasy and science fiction, all in the name of progress.

So be it. If society is on the 49th level of impurity, here’s a booster shot of Torah truth to raise it back up a notch or two.

The Mishna in Shevuos 29A teaches about shevuas shav, an oath made in vain, which, of course, is a serious transgression. It begins as follows:

איזו היא שבועת שוא נשבע לשנות את הידוע לאדם אמר על העמוד של אבן שהוא של זהב ועל האיש שהוא אשה ועל האשה שהיא איש

What is an oath made in vain? If one swears about something that is contrary to what is known to man; he says about a pillar of stone that it is gold, about a man that he is a woman, or about a woman that she is a man…

This is codified in Jewish law without controversy (Rambam Hilchos Shevuos 5:22, Shulchan Aruch Yoreh De’ah 236:4, etc.). It’s as basic as it gets.

Chazal offered examples of statements that are so absurd, such obvious distortions of that which is self-evident, that one who takes an oath to that effect transgresses the prohibition of taking an oath in vain. According to the Torah, one who swears that a man is a woman, or a woman is a man, is not taken seriously. He is flogged for swearing in vain.

Even if he brings a peer-reviewed “scientific” study.

There are those today, faux intellectuals, who claim there is Torah support for gender-bending madness, as they do for every perverse notion that emerges from the spiritual sewage of the Western world. It is not enough for them to be perverts and idolaters; they have to claim they are righteous followers of the Torah, in fact the most righteous of all.

When they go on their inevitable hunt for Torah sources to cherry-pick, take out of context, and distort beyond recognition, you can be sure this one won’t make it into their little basket.

Nedarim 24B is another illuminating source for dark times such as these. The Gemara discusses the legal consequences of foolish oaths and vows. For example, someone swears that he saw “like those who went up from Egypt on the road”. This is an impossible exaggeration – surely he did not see millions of people in one place – and therefore it is a foolish vow.

But is it? The Gemara continues:

Ravina said to Rav Ashi, maybe this man saw a nest of ants and called them by the name “those who went up from Egypt”, and hence he swore appropriately!

He said to him, when one swears, he swears according to our minds [according to the understanding of the average person], and we don’t refer to ants in this way.

It’s standard practice for Amalekite institutions to play word games and change the definition of common words to trick people and promote a nefarious agenda – all while “technically” telling the truth.

The Torah doesn’t accept such chicanery. If, for example, you want to advertise a pharmaceutical product as being “safe and effective”, the definitions of “safe” and “effective” have to align with what the average person understands them to be, not technical jargon (see here) that obfuscates how unsafe and ineffective many such products actually are.

The same is true with all the other word games that the snakes play to avoid giving straight answers to questions, avoid legal trouble, and, most of all, mislead unsuspecting people down a harmful path.

It doesn’t matter what they call something. It matters what normal people understand it to be.

This is supported by sources in Tanach as well. When Yaacov agreed to work for Lavan for seven years in exchange for the right to marry Rachel, he stipulated “for Rachel, your youngest daughter” (Bereishis 29:18). Why all the details? Everyone already knew that Rachel was his youngest daughter.

Rashi cites the Midrash, as follows: Because he knew that [Lavan] was a swindler. [Therefore Yaacov] said to him, I will work for Rachel. And lest you say [we agreed upon] a different Rachel from the market, therefore it says “your daughter”. And lest you say “I will switch Leah’s name and call her Rachel,” therefore it says “your youngest”. Even so, it didn’t help, for he tricked him.

They didn’t just come up with this game yesterday.

As Yeshaya 20:5 warns:

הוי האמרים לרע טוב ולטוב רע שמים חשך לאור ואור לחשך שמים מר למתוק ומתוק למר

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil, who profess darkness to be light and light to be darkness, bitter to be sweet and sweet to be bitter.

I wonder if this phenomenon has ever been so literally true.

__________________________

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Serious Tanach Study Is Almost Entirely Neglected in the Orthodox World Today

What’s Pshat?

This week’s Torah class is a fundamental lesson on “pshat”, which is the subject of much confusion.  The recording is available here.
Serious Tanach study is almost entirely neglected in the Orthodox world today.  Most people still understand Tanach on the level of a 10-year old, which is approximately when the cookie-cutter yeshiva they attended transferred them to the Gemara assembly line.
Why is it this way? Because it’s good PR for the yeshivas, and more impressive for a Bar Mitzvah boy, a little pisher, to read a complex pilpul that someone else wrote for him than something more suitable for his age and level.  And, of course, long term it’s better for shidduchim.  No one’s impressed by someone studying Chumash and Rashi (even though that’s exactly what the Chafetz Chaim was “caught” doing) and, at the end of the day, it’s all about impressing people.
That’s not the official reason it’s done this way, but it’s the truth.
And it’s a disaster.
Maybe a long time ago it was an eis la’asos and Tanach study needed to be put a little bit on the back burner.  But it’s a disaster today, on many levels.  It was never intended for Jews to be functionally illiterate when it comes to Tanach, or to permanently relate to it on a child’s level.
I have a lot to say about this.  My first year learning in Israel I was in the highest Gemara shiur and I hated it.  I confided in my night seder Rebbe, who I was close with, that we were sitting and learning Gemara all day, but I didn’t even know Chumash and Rashi.
We started a seder together in Chumash and Rashi, and I continued learning all of Tanach on my own.  It bothered me that I didn’t know Tanach.  It didn’t bother anyone else in the yeshiva, and presumably they still never bothered to open the books written by our greatest prophets.
The yeshiva was not happy with me.  I dropped out of the shiur, didn’t join another one, did my own thing, and almost got thrown out because of it.  I got into more trouble for carving out my own learning program (which included Gemara) than people who got drunk every night and fooled around, because what I was doing was dangerous to them.  I was succeeding, and I wasn’t doing it their way.  That’s an existential threat.
The same story repeated itself my second year in Israel in a different yeshiva, and in Yeshiva University.  I was told by two prominent rabbis, one in Israel and one in YU, that studying Tanach was bittul Torah.  Yes, they uttered those words.
Someone in my family, a young woman in her twenties, recently spoke proudly about how she is learning Gemara.  She later asked me in all seriousness what the big deal is about Rashi’s commentary on Chumash.  After all, she said, all he does is quote Midrashim.  She wasn’t being disrespectful, she geuninely didn’t know.
This is progress?  This is education?
For the last two years Erev Rav have been able to get away with telling people that we have to do whatever doctors say, because a pasuk says that doctors can and should heal.  They take a simple pasuk, twist it in ways that would make even a Karaite blush, and yeshiva-educated Jews have no idea how badly they are being played.
Then yeshiva-educated people, people with semicha themselves who give Torah classes, tell me in all seriousness that we have to do whatever “the rabbis” say, because of a pasuk that says we cannot veer to the right or left of what the judge tells us.  No context, no boundaries, no explanation.
Of course, this is a complete distortion (I wrote about it here and spoke about it here), but these people understand Tanach about as much as a Christian with his King James Bible.  So the pasuk says, that’s the pshat, end of story.  Go take the shot and jump off the cliff if they say so.
So yes, it matters if people are ignorant of Tanach, even if they can dazzle you with a brilliant dissection of a line of Gemara twelve different ways, which will make no practical difference in anyone’s life, except when it comes to fundraising for the yeshiva and getting the “best” shidduchim.
So Tanach has been left for children, pseudo-intellectuals who have no respect for Chazal, Bible critics, and missionaries. Shlomo HaMelech, the wisest of all men, apparently wrote three books that have nothing important to teach us.  The Rishonim wasted their time writing commentaries when they could have been learning even more Gemara.  And we should just keep the assembly line moving as it is, because maybe we will churn out a few more Talmudic scholars, even if everyone else gets turned off to Judaism, even if many of those who stick around are cold and hollow inside and just go through the motions of “being frum” in observable ways.  A little Tanach learned properly wouldn’t solve all their problems — our problems run very deep — but it would go a long way.
I have a lot more to say about this, but this is enough for now.  If you can relate to any of this, you will probably enjoy this week’s Torah class.  And if you can’t relate to any of this, you need to listen to this week’s Torah class more than you know, even if it infuriates you, because all the gedolim this, and all the gedolim that.  That’s never true anyway, I don’t care if people are infuriated, never did, and I’m not about to start now.  This needs to be said.
Because it’s tragic for Jewish adults who went through the yeshiva world to be ignorant of Tanach, and even more tragic if they think that’s exactly the way it should be.
The class is available here.

__________________________

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Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (Son of Rabbi Yaacov Yosef) Against COVID and ‘Flu’ Shots

Rav Ovadia Yosef Drops a Bomb + New Torah Class

Rav Ovadia Yosef, son of Rav Yaacov Yosef, grandson of the former Chief Rabbi of Israel whose name he bears, has a weekly radio program on which he takes questions from callers.  Two weeks ago a caller brought up the covid and “flu” shots, and the fact that we hear many, many instances of heart attacks, including among children and yeshiva students, the likes of which we never heard of until now.  The caller asked what Rav Yosef had to say about this and all the terrifying things that are happening.
Rav Yosef replied that “shev v’al ta’aseh adif”, which means that in cases of doubt such as these it is better to take no action, rather than actively do something which might cause harm.  He continued that vaccines in general are a positive thing (sigh), but the recent shots were not sufficiently tested, and there are many problems with them.  Therefore, it’s better to take no action — in other words, to refrain from taking the shots.
This is what I and others were shouting from the rooftops from day one, although it’s been a long time since there was any reasonable doubt.  It’s long past time that more rabbis who aren’t actively working for the enemy do justice to their titles, and state in no uncertain terms that these shots are as forbidden as a Zyklon B shower.  (The person who shared this video with me speculated that Rav Yosef has to be very careful about what he says on Israeli public radio, even as he tries to make it clear that people should not take the shots.)
Rav Yosef then added that he knows explicitly that NONE of the grandchildren of Rav Chaim Kanievsky took the shots. He then repeated this emphatically.
The host of the radio program (whose screen must have been flashing “Red Alert!) quickly said that we rely on the instructions of the Ministry of Health, and that of course there is another side to this.
“We are confused,” replied Rav Yosef ambiguously, and they went to the next call.
The clip (in Hebrew) is available here.
On some level it is a bombshell to be told with such certainty, by a rabbi who is in a position to know, that none of Rav Kanievsky’s grandchildren took the shots, when the government and the media they control so heavily leveraged the Kanievsky name to push the accursed shots. Numerous propaganda outlets “reported” the non-existent ruling from Rav Kanievsky.
Of course, they were not actually reporting, but regurgitating what they were given to publish, touching it up a little to make it slightly different from what their colleagues in other propaganda offices were publishing for their targeted populations.  They did not investigate or perform actual journalism; the government fed them information and instructions, and they dutifully “reported” it as fact.
When will any of these “media” outlets report this extremely relevant revelation about Rav Kanievsky’s grandchildren, spoken clearly from a credible source?
When will people who lie for a living become trustworthy?  Never.
The truth is that this charade should never have gotten off the ground.  Contrary to the belief of ignorant masses and dishonest people looking to push an agenda, a tortured one-word reply to a leading question shouted in someone’s ear in a staged video does not constitute a halachic ruling, let alone a ruling that is actually binding on anyone, let alone a ruling that is binding on the entire Jewish people.
In other words, whatever the “media” was reporting in the name of Rav Kanievsky had exactly zero halachic significance.  It was all just a bunch of hot air and rhetoric.
Furthermore, even if, theoretically, all of his grandchildren did take the shots — even if they had an IV drip from the finest German pharmaceutical companies so they could be the first to take every new shot and every new booster for every conceivable medical concern — it would also have exactly zero halachic significance.
Judaism is not a cult.  Those who browbeat people with the recently invented notion of “Da’as Torah”, which has become nothing more than a virtue-signaling, kosherized form of “just following orders”, might as well be idolaters, for it is not Hashem they are serving.
There is a time and place for rabbis to adjudicate matters of doubt and offer guidance — provided that they have acquired the requisite knowledge of the matter, studied the specific question carefully from multiple angles, and arrived at an honest, independent conclusion, which they have substantiated so that they their ruling can be studied and critiqued.
Sometimes these rulings are binding on an individual, and sometimes these rulings are even binding on a community that has empowered the rabbi or local Beis Din to adjudicate for them.
Under no circumstances can a rabbi — even a pious and scholarly rabbi — simply make a declaration as if it is God’s word from Sinai.  Anyone who pretends otherwise is distorting the very foundations of the Torah, and is either a brainwashed cultist or a heretic.  Rabbis who mislead the people in this fashion are evil and should be banished from the community until such time as we have the power to judge them and punish them as they deserve, may it be soon.
So, on the one hand, this revelation from Rav Yosef is very important, because it might wake up some people about how they have been misled, and then maybe more dominoes can fall.
On the other hand, we should all have enough of a true Torah education not to fall for cheap propaganda orchestrated by the Erev Rav establishment, and tailored by phony rabbis placed in positions of influence specifically to mislead the Jewish people.
For a crash course in this fundamental area, I recommend the following material:
Don’t just follow “Da’as Torah”; learn the Torah, really learn it. The more actual knowledge you have, the better equipped you will be to ask intelligent questions, evaluate answers, and tell the difference between a genuine rabbi and a corrupt phony.
When we care enough to acquire the knowledge, we should merit to have genuine rabbis and true Jewish leaders to guide us properly.

__________________________

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Download Tovim Ha-Shenayim as a PDF for free! My books are available on Amazon and in Israel directly from me. Email me to order.

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Grant a Pandemic AMNESTY?!

Apology Not Accepted

Many public figures who bullied and blackmailed people into taking toxic shots are scrambling for fig leaves. It’s not yet a movement – most continue to act as if they did nothing untoward, let alone abetted a genocidal conspiracy – but it’s definitely a trend.

A recent article in The Atlantic – just another pseudo-intellectual propaganda outlet whose only place is in the bathroom, and not as reading material – called for “a pandemic amnesty”. That’s right, the sort of people who routinely try to destroy others for something they said twenty years ago now want you to forgive and forget what they did to you.

Meanwhile, they aren’t even taking responsibility for their behavior. The most they can manage is that they were misled, maybe even that they were lied to. The experts told them to call you the most malicious names, to terrorize you and your children, to force you to obstruct your breathing and take accursed shots, to denounce you to authorities – everything short of deporting you to a prison camp, and that was in the works, too. They complied without an ounce of hesitation or compassion. They complied with religious fervor and malice.

But they couldn’t have known better. Let it go.

Ben Shapiro expressed outrage at having been lied to – as well he should – but stopped short of taking responsibility for promoting this misinformation to his massive audience in condescending language. Shapiro has every right to defer to whichever expert he chooses to trust in any particular situation, but he has no right to pressure others to surrender their decision-making process to the same expert, or at all. At most he can suggest it and explain why his expert’s opinion should be given more weight than yours. Then we could have an intelligent, respectful discussion, and possibly even convince one another without resorting to abusive tactics.

Unfortunately, he joined the chorus of bullies and blackmailers. This requires real teshuva. Real teshuva means acknowledging one’s guilt, expressing sincere remorse, resolving not to repeat the mistake, taking measures to ensure it doesn’t happen again, and rectifying the damage however possible. Blaming people for lying to you doesn’t cut it.

Shapiro is right that we cannot become experts in everything, and must rely on others to guide us where our knowledge is insufficient. However, there is a big difference between deferring to a plumber’s professional opinion on how to unclog your drain and calling perfectly healthy people dopes for not deferring to the demands of Big Pharma and their stooges. Even a sick person who needs medical intervention is advised to seek multiple opinions (not multiple people who read from the same script, but independent opinions from people with actual knowledge and wisdom).

I don’t believe Ben Shapiro is a bad person, but he made a terrible mistake, and for that he needs to take responsibility. There is no shame in having been misled – I wore a mask and used hand gel in the beginning. The shame is in making excuses and saying you couldn’t have known better – especially when you make a career out of being smarter and more informed than others.

This is especially true when thousands of medical professionals and other informed people were desperately trying to warn everyone about the lies, corruption, and dangers involved with the shots. It is inconceivable that none of this information reached those who are issuing non-apologies today. Did they examine this information with an open mind? Did they consider it at all? Or did they dismiss it out of hand, with jeers?

Why is it that those issuing non-apologies failed to do so until someone from Pfizer itself admitted that they didn’t test their accursed shots for stopping the spread of whatever Covid is? Why was nothing short of an admission of guilt sufficient evidence that something was seriously amiss about the whole thing? Can a rational, intelligent person be called such if nothing else will budge him? Are we really that helpless? Is that the message? What if Pfizer and the criminal “experts” never admitted anything?

The most dangerous aspect of these non-apologies is that they leave the door open for those making them to repeat exactly the same behavior in the future. If they could not possibly have known better last time, then they have no soul-searching to do and nothing to learn from their mistake. Sure, they learned that other people did some very outrageous things, but what’s to stop those who trusted them from continuing to follow “experts” down the path of self-destruction and tyranny next time around?

We cannot be an expert on every subject, but we can ask questions, make informed decisions, and beware of deceitful people – which include “experts” and rabbis. This is, in fact, what the Torah demands of us “regular people”, as I vociferously argued all along. Besides, it’s not like the bad guys were subtle.

There is also a tendency for people to apologize on behalf of those who haven’t even issued non-apologies. It’s a disturbing phenomenon even among those who didn’t fall for the shots.

Trump’s supporters give him a free pass over his key role in promoting the shots, or they bend over backwards to argue that it was a brilliant gambit on his part to thwart something even more sinister. Israeli citizens have been excusing Netanyahu or their sold-out politician of choice because they cannot accept that they are frauds who betrayed them. How easily they fall for someone who says what they want to hear!

The most common excuse they give for the politicians who sold them out is “he didn’t know better”. Seriously? It’s their job to know better. They have all the information and experts at their fingertips, but they couldn’t do better than millions of ordinary people who were bombarded with lies and propaganda? We’re three years into this and they’re still clueless? If that’s the case, what good are they?

That people who saw through the Covid charade can offer such a lame excuse for some of the leaders who pushed it is cognitive dissonance at its finest.

The same holds true for the many prominent rabbis and medical professionals who “didn’t know better” and were “just following the experts”. They don’t get off the hook with that excuse. It’s their job to know better, too, and not just follow anyone. That’s why they get the high positions, salary, and prestige: to get it right when it matters most. People at that level aren’t entitled to make excuses. The buck stops with them.

But they aren’t even making excuses. Their followers, the people who want so desperately to believe in them, are making excuses on their behalf. They are rationalizing for those who aren’t even rationalizing for themselves.

The Torah offers the opportunity for even the greatest of sinners to repent and salvage something positive from all the carnage they caused. But they have to actually repent. Lame excuses don’t cut it, shifting the blame is unacceptable, and no one can make apologies on their behalf.

Everyone who played abetted the tyranny of the last few years – from the demons at the top, to your neighbor who verbally abused you, and everyone in between – has an obligation to repent. They have to take full responsibility for what they did, make amends however possible, and learn from their experience so that they don’t repeat this behavior in the future. (There will be more tests.)

Until then, I don’t want to hear their excuse-laden non-apologies, and I don’t want to hear others rationalizing on their behalf. If we whitewash evil behavior and overlook our own, we guarantee more of the same.

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