חנניה ווייסמאן Chananya Weissman

Remaining in Galus for the Money? What if You LOSE the Money?

The Galus Money Trap

One of the most common reasons/excuses Jews choose to remain in galus is monetary considerations. Many are unwilling to compromise on the material standard of living they have become accustomed to. They obsessively compare Israel to galus in every materialistic sense, inevitably find it inferior in some area, and triumphantly declare that Israel isn’t for them. It is a sad commentary on the spiritual assimilation of many Orthodox Jews

Others believe that living in Israel all but assures financial ruin. They know someone who made aliya, couldn’t make a living, and was forced to return to galus. Surely if they made the same reckless move, they would join the millions of destitute Jews in Israel who are starving in the streets. They just can’t make it in Israel, and there’s no point in trying. Echoing the spies who had this notion long before them, “It is a land that consumes its inhabitants.”

As Chazal teach us, a falsehood that persists must have an element of truth to it, and this is no exception. Unless someone has a rare level of faith and commitment, it would be irresponsible to make aliya without exploring parnassa opportunities in advance. Our idealistic actions must be properly grounded in reality.

The problem is when “pragmatism” becomes such a dominant force that idealism is rendered hypothetical.

Torah-observant Jews must confront the following questions:

1) What is the monetary value of finally leaving galus and returning to our homeland? What price should we be willing to pay, if the privilege of fulfilling this dream was a commodity we needed to purchase?

2) What amount of material upgrade is worth leaving Eretz Yisrael to dwell in a foreign land? We are not talking about the extreme case of someone who literally cannot survive in Israel, but those who can live more comfortably outside the land. How much money should be enough to justifiably entice a Jew to leave Israel?

3) In theory, if every Jew could live much more comfortably in galus, or received an overwhelming offer to leave the land, could we allow our collective stake in Eretz Yisrael to essentially be bought out? If not, why not? If there is a critical mass that must refuse such a financial enticement, how many people is that, and how are we to decide who must remain as a token Jewish presence?

4) Shouldn’t the many impoverished Jews in galus – including those with expensive lifestyles who still cannot make ends meet – make aliya? Shouldn’t the many Jews who use monetary considerations as a reason/excuse to remain in galus commit to aliya if they were offered a lucrative job in Israel? At what point can we fairly say there isn’t anything to lose by trying, or that the risk is minimal enough that idealism should push the needle?

5) How do Torah-observant Jews reconcile their “pragmatism” with the fundamental principle that parnassa comes from Hashem? On what basis do they believe that their ability to earn a living – and, by direct extension, God’s ability to provide the parnassa He has decreed for them – depends entirely on their remaining in galus indefinitely?

6) Is it not conceivable that the material comforts of galus are a test, even a lure of the yetzer hara to deter Jews from returning home? How can it be that many Jews consider the miraculous return of millions of Jews to Israel in two generations as “the work of Satan”, yet consider the Holocaust the plan of Hashem, and the material comforts of galus as a gift from heaven? Is this not a mental illness?

Orthodox Jews in galus know the Torah perspective to these questions, but they bury it under a grave of rationalizations and deflections. Here it is:

The monetary value of leaving galus is inestimable. No amount of material upgrade is worth remaining in galus, nor leaving Eretz Yisrael for a more comfortable life. Those who are literally forced out of the land by truly extenuating circumstances should leave with the greatest of anguish and the intense desire to return at the earliest opportunity. This is our law and our tradition.

The notion of allowing ourselves to be bought out of our land for any price is anathema. Throughout history we have bought out interlopers who occupied our land (out of necessity, for lack of ability or courage to expel them). The idea of letting foreigners bribe us to willingly abandon our land is incompatible with Judaism. Every individual Jew who allows material enticements – not absolute necessities – to keep him in exile has sold part of his soul and weakened the entire nation. For what? A bigger home? A fancier car? Cheaper groceries? The Jews in the desert remembered the fish and vegetables they enjoyed as slaves in Egypt, and wished to return. Do we shake our heads at their pettiness, then close the Chumash and emulate it?

As long as a Jew can so much as get by in Israel, he should be unwilling to stay in galus for any price. And getting by doesn’t mean living a life of excess in the most expensive parts of the country. It means settling the land and finding a way to make it work.

Amazingly enough, and contrary to the common jokes and snide remarks, moving to Israel may even be the best way of preserving one’s wealth.

Rav Yissachar Shlomo Teichtal makes an astounding observation in Eim Habanim Semeicha Chapter 3, Section 48. He discusses the Midrashic teaching that Yaacov made himself “like a bridge” to transfer his possessions across the river to save them from falling into the hands of Eisav. Rav Teichtal derives that it is precisely because Yaacov was like a bridge – with only one foot in galus and one foot firmly rooted in Israel – that he merited to save his money. All the years that Yaacov was compelled to dwell in galus, he had one foot out the door. If not for this – if Yaacov had two feet firmly planted in galus – his money would have fallen to Eisav.

Rav Teichtal explains that this is a lesson for the descendants of Yaacov up to our times. Those who turn their thoughts and their hearts away from Israel ultimately lose their money to the goyim. Instead of using this money to redeem the land and rebuild it, it goes to Eisav. However, those who have one foot out the door, eager to leave galus, have the merit of Eretz Yisrael over their possessions as if they were already there. It is the best financial decision they could ever make!

Remaining in galus does not protect a Jew’s wealth – it is a primary reason for him to lose it!

Rav Teichtal sums it up with the following stinging comment from the sefer Pardes Yosef: “As long as a Jew does not return to his land, and does not sit under his vine and fig tree, his wealth and his business are utterly worthless.”

I would add the following teaching from Sanhedrin 112A. The Gemara is discussing an ir hanidachas, a city in which the majority of the residents were lured to avoda zara. The entire city must be burned to the ground, including the property and possessions of any righteous people who lived in the city.

Rabbi Shimon asks why the Torah said the property of the tzaddikim should be destroyed. After all, they did not participate in the avoda zara. For all we know, they might have even protested it!

Rabbi Shimon answers as follows: “What caused them to live in the midst of the city? Their money. Therefore, their money is lost.”

This is a stinging message not just for those who choose to live in a “sin city” for monetary reasons, but for those who choose to remain in galus for monetary reasons. Jews who live where they do not belong for the sake of money, at the expense of their spiritual wellbeing and purpose as Jews, acquire a “reverse segula” to lose the money anyway.

I am not a prophet, and I cannot guarantee that everyone who moves to Israel will prosper in the immediate future. That is not the way of the world. Nor do I recommend for people to move without making reasonable plans and preparations (though, the way things are going in much of the world, that might soon be advisable). However, the Torah perspective on the money trap of galus is clear.

Every Jew in galus should have one foot out the door, and strive to lift the other.

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Rabbi Chananya Weissman’s sefer Go Up Like a Wall is available for free at https://chananyaweissman.com/book.php?id=8.  Hard copies are available on Amazon for the minimum price they allowed, and also available in Israel at no cost.

Exodus 2.0?

Letter from Concerned Elders of Israel

The author of this clever piece invited me to share it, but asked to remain anonymous. I will comment that it may well be closer to historical fact than parody, considering that 80% of the Jews perished in Egypt, and many of the remaining 20% pined for the good old days of galus. Our generation has a golden opportunity to correct this historic, tragic mistake.
Chananya
A newly discovered letter from Concerned Elders of Israel on the eve of the Exodus, translated for the benefit of the modern reader:
To our dear brethren in Goshen and throughout greater Egypt, peace be upon you. The developments of the last few months have been very exciting, and many of us have been caught up in the current events that seem, at first glance, to be miraculous, and too many, the beginning of the long-awaited redemption. However, it is also important for us to re-state and emphasize that it has been the unanimous opinion of our gedolim that we are to remain in galus until such as time as God Himself redeems us, and until that happens, we are to accept the yoke of gentile servitude without question, and we are forbidden to in any way rebel against our Egyptian masters and His Majesty, the Pharaoh. Such was explicitly told to us by our avos, Avraham and Yaakov, and repeated by Yosef Hatzaddik before he died.
Concerning the horrible plagues that have befallen this country in the last few months, we must remember that it they can all be rationally attributed to a chain of natural consequences, and not necessarily a series of miracles, for after all, the Ribbono Shel Olam would only make beneficial miracles on behalf of great tzaddikim, like of those of generations past. There have been reports of an awesome mountain at the headwaters of the Nile, far to our south in the land of Ethiopia, that erupted and spewed thick red mud into the river, and it is this blood-like substance that forced all the frogs out of the Nile and killed the fish, and it was the piles of dead frogs and fish that in turn attracted all types of vermin, disease, and wild animals.
It is too soon for us to declare that these events have anything to do with our plight although they have distracted the Egyptians from forcing us to work as of late. Have the anthrax and hail done anything to actually help us leave Egypt? We must, unfortunately, be ready for these plagues to pass, and for the Egyptians to recover and begin subjugating us once more. We can anticipate this because Avraham Avinu was told that his descendants would be oppressed and subjugated as strangers in a land not theirs for 400 years, and by the count of our gedolim, it is more than clear that this galus has barely lasted 200 years. It is also wrong for anyone to attempt to calculate when the Redemption will come about, because when it does not happen as he predicts, it harms his emunah.
We have nothing against individuals who may feel that for them, eventually settling in the land of Canaan is right, but for most of us, it may not be so. Today, Eretz Canaan is a land full of idolaters and their idols; there are barely any Israelite religious institutions there, and the governmental authorities are not friendly to Israelites. At least here, the government sees to it that we are well-fed, with plenty of fresh fish and stewed meat, and plentiful vegetables, and does not seek to indoctrinate our children. Here agriculture is much easier, as the Nile provides the country with an unending water supply, whereas Canaan is dependent on seasonal rainfall, which, as we all know happened many times in the times of the avos, sometimes is not sufficient, leading to devastating famines. There are also reports that the land is inhabited by fearsome and belligerent giants, against whom we stand little chance in battle.
Concerning the most prominent advocate of this new, nationalist, redemptive movement, Moses, son of Harav Hagaon Amram ben Kehas, zatz’’al, we must exercise extreme caution. He may have yichus, but his ideas and pronouncements have been highly questionable.
Firstly, he still has to answer for his unusual upbringing. It has become known to us that he did not actually grow up at home with his distinguished parents and ybidla’’h siblings, but was actually raised in the royal household as the adoptive grandson of the very Pharaoh who first subjugated us and massacred are children! We have been told by reliable sources that even when he was just a young man, he engaged in subversive and rebellious activities against the Egyptian authorities, a grave prohibition under the law of the land and the commandments of our fathers. He disappeared from this country for decades, and only now, after reportedly marrying the daughter of a prominent idolatrous Midianite priest, he has come back telling us that which none of our gedolim have said, that God appeared to him and that he is His emissary of Redemption.
We do not need to remind you how bad it was for us when he first showed up, and instead of redeeming us, he incited Pharaoh to deprive us of the raw materials we so badly needed to complete our brick quotas, which remained as before. People claim to have seen Moses perform miracles, such as turning a staff into a serpent, and summoning frogs and blood and the like. Alas, there are equally reliable reports of Pharaoh’s own magicians doing likewise, making this Moses not any different from or better than any of them.
Moses’s pronouncements also fly in the face of what we have been expecting from any traditional redeemer. We have been waiting to be led back to the promised land, but he wants to take us into the desert, to some mountain venerated by the same idolatrous Midianites. He has repeatedly demanded that Pharaoh let us go to this place in order to offer sacrifice to our God, and that by no means will we perform any form of traditional sacrifice here in Egypt, as that would offend our masters, but now he has changed his tune, saying that we will offer God sacrifice right here in Egypt, and that we will slaughter the animals that our masters consider sacred. We would not be surprised if Moses will soon claim that instead of building the Beis Hamikdash in Eretz Canaan, as we know we shall, we should build a temporary and portable mikdash in the desert next to his chosen mountain. We can only imagine what other halachic hiddushim he will try to spring on us if we follow him there.
Therefore, we call upon all of you to please exercise patience, caution, and reason. Moses wants all of us to, in the coming days, prepare goats and sheep for sacrifice, and to eventually apply the blood of those animals to our doorposts before the night when he says we will be driven out by Pharaoh. We have a chazaka that just as after the last events, Pharaoh did not let us go, so too after whatever happens next week he will not let us go, especially after a mass act of rebellion on our part. Adderabba, it could lead to a reprisal on their part, chas veshalom. Therefore, we will only begin to prepare for an Exodus from Egypt once we hear that Pharaoh himself has given his permission. We call upon all Beis Yisrael to do likewise.

Can You Imagine Corona-Scare ‘Rulings’ Studied Seriously in a Future Beit Midrash?!

Can so many rabbis be wrong?

Religious Jews find themselves in a very uncomfortable situation. Many of them are living in terror of covid. Their lives revolve around reducing their chances of getting covid at the expense of all else. It’s a miserable way to live, and very dubious from a Torah standpoint.

Now they are being pressured from all directions to get injected with something that is being touted as a vaccine. They are being told that it is safe and effective, that they shouldn’t believe the “fake news” to the contrary, that the people who suffered horrible “coincidences” and even died shortly after being injected are no cause for concern, covid is far worse anyway, they are endangering others if they don’t get injected, and they simply must get injected as soon as possible. The Torah demands it of them.

Their instincts tell them that the government and drug companies do not have their best interests in mind. When has that ever been the case? They know that drug companies wield enormous leverage over politicians and the medical establishment. Corruption is inevitable; only a naive fool would think otherwise. Why would anyone implicitly trust these people with their health and their lives? What have they ever done to earn that trust, and what more could they possibly do to lose it?

But most people are easily manipulated. It takes a person of very strong character and mind to ignore an endless deluge of propaganda and pressure. Most people do not devote themselves to strengthening their character and mind, and even those who do can be worn down. It is a war of attrition. The other side is much better equipped to fight such a war.

Very few people are getting injected with informed consent. Very few people understand the potential benefits and risks, the different options, and have decided that, from a scientific and medical perspective, this is a drug they want in their body. They are counting on people they hope can be trusted to do the dirty work for them and give them good advice.

For most people, this is the medical establishment, the mainstream media, the groupthink of their peer group, and maybe a doctor they personally know. They figure that all these people can’t possibly be wrong. Very few of these people are truly informed either, or necessarily trustworthy, which would render their “opinions” worthless. But the notion that the medical establishment has been corrupted, the mainstream media is complicit, their friends are fools, and their doctor has violated his oath is just too much to bear. So most people follow along out of comfort and convenience.

Others remain skeptical until a trusted rabbi, or a cadre of rabbis, reassures them. Surely the rabbis value truth and human life above all else. Surely the rabbis performed due diligence before speaking on the issue. Surely the rabbis are impervious to outside influences and pressures like other mortals. The rabbis work for God and no one else, and God speaks through them. If the rabbis tell them a drug is safe, then safe it must be, and if the rabbis tell people to take it, then take it they must.

The notion that large numbers of rabbis have been manipulated, or corrupted, or lazy, or derelict in their duties, or might steer Jews to harm is just too much to bear. So most religious Jews as well follow along out of comfort and convenience.

This is how an overwhelming number of people have come to ignore their instincts and knowledge of the past. They have come to trust untrustworthy people, because people they trust tell them the pathological liars can be trusted this time. They run to take a drug that they do not understand and do not even want to understand, because it is the comfortable and convenient choice. A year of masks, lockdowns, fear, misery, propaganda, confusion, bullying, and desperation will do that to people. Very few people have a clear head anymore. They just want it to be over with, and they will inject themselves with anything in exchange for a little hope.

Their minds have been damaged and their spirits have been crushed.

The rabbi is the ultimate bulwark for religious Jews. When the truth is unclear, the rabbi is supposed to show us the light. When we are unsure, the rabbi is supposed to give us confidence. Can it be that so many rabbis, including many prominent rabbis, would get it wrong when the stakes are so high? How could such a thing even be possible?

The answer to the first question is, yes, without a doubt. It’s happened before, and the results were catastrophic. Here are just a few examples.

The Jews in the desert sent twelve spies to Israel. These were the best of the best: heads of tribes, great rabbis, extremely “religious” Jews. Ten of them became corrupted and told the Jews not to enter the land, while only two remained upright and faithful. It was ten experts against two, ten “leading rabbis” against two. The correct choice was clear: the extreme minority. The Jews followed “the majority of experts” and paid the ultimate price. They were expected to know better, to recognize the truth, and not to be swayed by numbers, credentials, or propaganda.

Korach was a massive talmid chacham, a prince among men. He made brilliant Torah-based arguments against Moshe, and attracted an impressive following. The rest of the nation was unsure of who to follow, even after all Moshe had done for them. How could the average person be expected to decide between these two giants, especially when Korach’s movement was sweeping through the masses? The Torah demanded the average person to recognize truth from falsehood, strengthen himself, and separate himself from the trendy new movement. They needed to hear the great rabbis, but then think for themselves and decide for themselves. Those who allowed themselves to get swept up in the hype lost everything.

The vast majority of people who claimed to be prophets were phonies. They misled the Jewish people for hundreds of years, and were one of the main causes of our downfall. These false prophets were not bums on the street. They were knowledgeable, spiritual people who earned a large following and were supported by the establishment. The real prophets struggled mightily to counter their false messages with God’s truth. The people were generally swayed by the false prophets – and were held accountable for failing to tell the difference.

In the tragic story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza, the great rabbis of the time did everything wrong from start to finish, despite mostly good intentions. The result was the destruction of Jerusalem and the bitter exile in which we still find ourselves.

The vast majority of the “leading rabbis” of Europe urged the Jews to remain there. America was an impure place, Israel was the last place a Jew should go, and everything would be fine if they stayed behind. That didn’t turn out too well. These “leading rabbis” led their followers to their doom.

Even one with a basic knowledge of Jewish history will be able to add many more examples. The bottom line is that even “leading rabbis” can be terribly wrong, and the average person is responsible to recognize this, uncomfortable as that may be.

The answer to the second question is that there are many ways rabbis can be wrong.

1. Bribery

The Torah warns rabbis not to take bribes of any kind, for it will impair their judgment and corrupt their wisdom. We tend to think of bribes as cash being passed under a table – which happens – but bribery can take many forms. Chazal teach that the spies were corrupted in part because they were afraid of losing their positions when the Jews decentralized in Israel. We must recognize that Diaspora rabbis who discourage aliya have this same conflict of interest, which cannot be underestimated.

Many decades ago my father had a Din Torah. One time as they left the building it was raining, and my father instinctively offered one of the rabbis an umbrella. The rabbi thanked my father and then recused himself from the case.

Rabbis with such integrity are in extremely short supply, and they are not the ones with cushy establishment positions. To believe that rabbis are otherworldly beings who are not susceptible to influences which can corrupt their thinking is a foolish, un-Torah position. The establishment is ruthlessly promoting an experimental vaccine, with unfathomable sums of money at stake, not to mention the sort of power and control we can hardly imagine. How can anyone believe that doctors and rabbis wouldn’t be “influenced” in a variety of ways to arrive at a desired conclusion? That is pure madness. This is specifically what the Torah is warning us about.

Even rabbis who do not have an establishment position can be bribed in a variety of ways. They can be promised support for their institutions. They can be promised that the government will give them and their followers special treatment in other areas. They can be threatened as well. The political and medical establishment is not run by God-fearing people. They will do whatever it takes to achieve their goals, and they will get influential rabbis on board however they can.

2. Taking shortcuts

The great Poskim of the previous generation, such as Rav Moshe Feinstein and Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, were asked to give rulings on many advances in technology and medicine. These true Gedolim would first become experts on the matter better than the experts. They would examine every angle and know the matter backwards and forwards. They would then apply the appropriate Torah sources (not just pick something out of a hat, as we often see today) and present a clear, logical train of thought to arrive at their conclusion.

Their responsa would become part of the corpus of genuine Torah, which would be studied and analyzed by scholar and layman alike. We would be able to retrace their steps, see how the dots connect, understand their thought process from start to finish, and appreciate the veracity of their conclusion. We would also understand the other sides to the issue and why these poskim decided against other plausible conclusions. When two poskim disagreed we would be able to understand why, and it could be argued in the Beit Midrash in the traditional way. It wasn’t dogma; it was real Torah, a living Torah.

Today’s “leading rabbis” are providing no such Torah. The typical “analysis” they provide can be distilled to the following:

“Smallpox was very bad and deadly. Smallpox vaccine is very good. Covid is very bad and scary. Therefore covid vaccine is also very good. The only choice is to take the covid vaccine or get covid and die, and kill others as well. Saving lives is good. So take the vaccine, which is also good.

“Let’s review: Covid bad. Saving lives good. Listen to doctors. Vaccine good. Everything else bad.”

I have written extensively about this in other articles in response to some of their “rulings”, which have no value from a Torah or scientific perspective. None of these “rulings” will be seriously studied and debated in the Beit Midrash. They will not become part of the corpus of Torah. They will not age well, and in fact will be a permanent source of shame and infamy for the rabbis who issued these “rulings”. Hence, their words carry no weight, and the credibility of these rabbis must be called into question, regardless of their prior credentials.

An expert in any field who makes fundamental errors, or violates the basic principles of his profession, must have his credibility questioned. Rabbis are no different. Even lesser qualified people must recognize these errors and violations, and not be swayed by wayward pronouncements.

Unless someone’s list of credentials includes “God Almighty”, his words may be challenged, and must stand up to inquiry.

3. Manipulation

Rabbis often depend on trusted individuals to provide them accurate information on which their rulings will be based. Elderly rabbis in particular tend to rely on a small number of “gatekeepers” to ensure that they are not overwhelmed by the public. Unfortunately, these gatekeepers wield disproportionate control over who is granted access to the rabbis and what information reaches their ears. Needless to say, this power can easily be abused.

We wish to believe that everyone involved has integrity, and that the holiness of the rabbis will prevent any evil from being perpetrated in their name, but that is a fantasy. Videos have shown the handlers of elderly rabbis feeding them entirely one-sided information, asking them leading questions, and prompting the desired “Yes” to their leading question. This is not Torah, yet these videos immediately go viral and are presumed to be unimpeachable.

It is outrageous that this sort of propaganda can be referred to as a Halachic ruling on a life and death matter, which millions of Jews must follow. If rabbis are unable to perform due diligence before issuing a ruling, they should recuse themselves from the matter.

Those who manipulate rabbis in this way are guilty of elder abuse. Most likely someone is greasing their palms as well. Only a fool who doesn’t wish to face an ugly reality will deny that this is a real problem.

4. Human nature

Many people tend to forget this, but rabbis are human beings. They are susceptible to the same temptations and shortcomings of everyone else. In fact, Chazal teach us that the greater the man, the greater the temptation. The fact that rabbis have greater knowledge than the average person does not cancel their human nature; it only makes them more dangerous if they fall prey to it.

One of the best historical examples of this is Yochanan Kohen Gadol, who served as the highest spiritual leader of the Jewish people for 80 years before becoming a Sadducee! Surely he took many followers astray with him, who continued to blindly trust him based on his credentials.

This is not an anomaly, but a warning that it can happen to anyone, even the best among us. Yochanan was greater than any man alive today. If he could go bad, it should not surprise us if rabbis today can go bad, too. Knowledge and a past track record guarantee nothing.

5. Following the trend

Just as most people wish to be in the majority and on the “right side” of things, rabbis are susceptible to the same pressure. This is especially true when being on the “wrong side” of public opinion means jeopardizing their position, reputation, livelihood, and more. It is not for nothing that the Torah adjures judges to fear no man, and to recuse themselves from judgment if they are unable to overcome their natural fears.

Cancel culture always existed, but today it is a clear and present danger for all people, every single moment. The overwhelming majority of rabbis who have come out in favor of the “vaccine” have not armed their statements with much substance. They have simply followed the tide and “ruled” that we must do whatever other people tell us. These rabbis have absconded their responsibility to others and used the Torah as a fig leaf, instead of rolling up their sleeves and doing their job.

(On a related note, these cowardly rabbis proclaim that we must “follow the majority of doctors”. This is not only incorrect on multiple levels, it is patently absurd. The majority of doctors tell us a man can become a woman any time he feels like it. Must we follow them? If not, why not? They don’t tell us.)

They tell us to follow “the majority” of doctors because this is the safest thing for them to say. If they are right, wonderful. If not, the rabbis can later excuse themselves by claiming that they were only following the accepted science of the time. Either way, they’re covered.

Why delve into it? Why learn too much and risk having your conscience nag you to take the “wrong” position? Who needs the tzorus? Just trust the doctors. And ignore the fact that most doctors are behaving exactly the same way. They don’t need tzorus, either.

6. Erev Rav

This will disturb people more than the previous explanations for why prominent rabbis can mislead the people, but I believe it is very prevalent in our time. Millions of erev rav joined our people when we left Egypt; they significantly outnumbered us, by as many as five to one according to one Midrashic opinion (see Mechilta Chapter 14). These people caused us no shortage of grief, dragging us down from within.

These erev rav procreated as well, and infiltrated our nation. Many of them grew beards and studied Torah, too.

The last Mishna in Sotah teaches that before Moshiach comes, the meeting house of rabbis will become one of prostitution. This is a frequent biblical metaphor for idol worship or otherwise straying from God. There is no doubt that this prediction has come true in our day, as we anticipate the imminent coming of Moshiach.

Therefore, it should not surprise us or even disturb us to see many rabbis, including prominent figures, leading our people astray. It may be due to any of the reasons mentioned previously, and it may well be because the rabbis are actually erev rav. Chazal told us in plain language that this would happen. It is happening now. The level of rabbinic malpractice in our time is so widespread, so extreme, and so clear that this must be it.

We should be grateful to Chazal for warning us about this phenomenon so long ago, allowing us to anticipate it and steel ourselves against it.

May God grant us the wisdom to tell truth from falsehood, and may He destroy the erev rav once and for all.

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www.chananyaweissman.com

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Response to Rabbi Avraham Steinberg’s Corona Vaccine Mongering

Yesterday there was an outrageous article on Arutz Sheva by Rabbi Avraham Steinberg. The views expressed in his article parallel the publicly expressed views of many rabbis, and pushed the envelope even further in the demonization of those who want no part of the experimental vaccine.
The Eretz Hemdah organization in Jerusalem, which includes an academy and a rabbinic court, sent out an email yesterday with Rabbi Steinberg’s “ruling” and jumping on the bandwagon, declaring that it is a “Halachic obligation” to take the vaccination, and they dismissed any safety concerns as if they are prophets.
I felt compelled to respond, and thank God that Arutz Sheva published my response.  It was by no means a sure thing.
I am also working on a longer piece explaining how it can be that so many prominent rabbis can be wrong, and how we are obligated to recognize when this happens. We need to strengthen ourselves in the face of relentless propaganda, deceit, and rabbinic malpractice.  The truth is on our side.  There is no doubt of this.
God is watching to see who stands with Him.  In fact, God is doing us a great favor by exposing all the phonies and Erev Rav among us.  When they are destroyed, we will recognize it as the blessing it is, and not the catastrophe we would have otherwise taken it to be.
Chananya

Response to Rabbi Steinberg

I allow myself to publicly challenge Rabbi Steinberg’s recent response to questions on the experimental vaccine. Not only do I allow myself, I consider it an obligation that I cannot shirk from through humility or fear. I am thoroughly convinced that his five “fundamental background facts” are anything but, and that the conclusions he draws based on them are dangerous on many levels. One does not need to be a talmid chacham or a world-renowned scientist to see this, as I will demonstrate point by point.

1. Rabbi Steinberg begins by writing that “COVID-19 is an international epidemic which has caused innumerable deaths the world over, including several thousands of our brothers in Israel.” He further notes that many of those who have recovered have suffered ongoing problems, in addition to the collateral damage to society from the situation.

This is true, but it is missing vital context. The number of deaths that have actually been caused by Covid-19 is entirely speculative. There have been countless reports from all over the world that hospitals have been listing covid as the cause of death even when patients died of entirely unrelated causes, such as car accidents and gunshot wounds. Whistleblowers have reported being instructed to list covid as the cause of death if even a tiny, harmless trace of the virus was found in the body. Governments and drug companies have a deep vested interest in inflating the numbers of covid deaths to exaggerate the fear, justify extreme restrictions, and ultimately convince people to take their expensive new drugs.

How many reported covid deaths were actually due to covid? We deserve to know. But the Israeli government has buried its protocols on the virus and its response to it for THIRTY YEARS (just as they did with the Yemenite Children Affair). This means that all freedom of information requests related to the situation, including a deeper look at the actual causes of death, are being denied.

What are they covering up and why? We deserve to know. Until the Ministry of Health comes totally clean, we cannot trust the numbers they feed us, nor any decisions based on these suspect numbers.

2. Rabbi Steinberg writes as fact that “to date, all of the methods employed to contain the epidemic have failed.” This is technically true, but extremely misleading. All of the methods that have been employed to contain the epidemic run in direct contradiction to the methods determined by Israel’s leading epidemiologists. This was the subject of an important documentary by Orly and Guy. In fact, they noted that Israel’s corona cabinet does not have a single epidemiologist, and in fact has refused to seriously consider their expert guidance for containing a virus. The epidemiologists are almost entirely against lockdowns and the other measures Israel has employed, and have detailed plans on file for how to handle an epidemic.

Consequently, the fact that the methods that have been employed have failed does not mean that the only response is an experimental vaccine. In this case, it suggests these methods should never have been used in the first place, and the epidemiologists should have had a seat at the table from the beginning.

In addition, many doctors worldwide have reported great success with a combination of vitamins and repurposed drugs, such as Dr. Zelenko’s protocol. These have been in use for many months, and potentially could have saved countless lives. Inexplicably, Israel’s Ministry of Health is expending all its efforts on promoting an experimental vaccine when there may well be much safer, more effective, and inexpensive treatments.

Could it have something to do with the contract the Ministry of Health signed with Pfizer, in which Israel obligated itself to vaccinate millions of citizens and share medical data with this foreign drug company? Is it possible that other treatments would have obviated the justification for lockdowns, restrictions, ongoing fear, and the urgency for an experimental vaccine?

These are questions that the establishment must be made to answer before another person is injected.

3. Rabbi Steinberg claims that the vaccines have “passed the accepted stages of research…received the accreditation of the most authorized regulatory agencies in the world, have proven to be extremely effective…[and] they have proven to be very safe.”

This is extremely misleading. As of today the FDA’s fact sheet on the vaccines writes as follows. All are direct quotes:

  • There is no U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved vaccine to prevent COVID-19.

  • The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine may not protect everyone.

  • The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine is an unapproved vaccine that may prevent COVID-19. There is no FDA-approved vaccine to prevent COVID-19.

  • The duration of protection against COVID-19 is currently unknown.

  • Serious and unexpected side effects may occur. Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine is still being studied in clinical trials.

  • The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine has not undergone the same type of review as an FDA-approved or cleared product.

    For Rabbi Steinberg, the Ministry of Health, or anyone else to claim that the vaccine has proven to be safe, or that it is even fully approved, is medical malpractice of the highest order. Again, one does not need to be an expert to see the wide gulf between the claims being made to the public under the guise of “facts”, and the actual facts being stated in plain English by Pfizer and the FDA.

4. Rabbi Steinberg writes as “fact”: “All the claims of conspiracy, and the alarmist fake news surrounding the vaccines, are unfounded, fake news, and a person should not take them into account. While there do remain several open questions, they don’t carry enough weight to avoid vaccination.”

In light of the above, I will leave it to the reader to decide if raising questions and concerns about the vaccine renders one a conspiracy theorist, a peddler of fake news, or any of the other disgusting epithets that are being slapped on people who have good reason to be skeptical.

As Rabbi Steinberg is also the author of the Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics, I must also question if it is medically ethical to smear those who have concerns about putting any drug in their body for any reason whatsoever. This is especially the case when the government has buried its protocols, there is a massive propaganda campaign to pressure people to take the experimental vaccine, and people who raise concerns are being bullied and censored. This is hardly the climate that should surround any medical procedure, and it runs counter to the most basic principle of informed consent.

If we cannot ask questions and receive clear answers, if in fact those who express concerns are mocked and slandered, then informed consent is absent, and it is unethical to administer the drug.

5. Rabbi Steinberg writes as fact that those “who refuse to be vaccinated cause damage to themselves, since they are liable to become very sick, and even to die. In addition, they cause damage to others…Hence, halakhically it is an obligation upon everyone to be vaccinated…”

Once again, this is extremely misleading. Being that the FDA and Pfizer openly admit that much is still unknown about the vaccine, and it is still being studied in clinical trials, one cannot in good conscience claim it is factual that one who refuses to take the experimental vaccine is causing damage to himself. On the contrary, he may well be sparing himself great damage and even death.

Furthermore, those who do choose to vaccinate can still get covid and pass it to others. At best, it temporarily reduces their chances of developing severe symptoms if they get infected. It does not immunize them against catching covid, nor does it prevent them from spreading it. To malign those who choose not to vaccinate as people who are violating a Torah commandment to protect their lives and the lives of others is unacceptable. It unfairly manipulates people to take an experimental vaccine, and it fosters a climate in which those who don’t are slandered as murderers. I object to this in the strongest of terms.

I will add that there is no obligation in the Torah to risk one’s health and wellbeing by taking an experimental drug for the sake of making others feel safer, or to potentially lower the chance of someone else getting sick. It is forbidden to pressure anyone to make such a choice.

In light of these “facts”, Rabbi Steinberg proceeds to smear “vaccination refusers” as criminals, and declares that it is permissible to force them to be injected with a drug against their will, punish them in a variety of ways, and isolate them from society. This is nothing short of horrific, and it violates the Nuremberg Code. No human being in good conscience can condone this conclusion or the rhetoric that is being used. My blood boils as I write these words.

I will conclude on a positive note. Rabbi Steinberg and other members of the establishment have done us a great unintended service. Whereas those who were skeptical about the vaccine until now needed to make arguments based on the nitty-gritty of science, and get sucked into debates about their worthiness to express an opinion on the matter, it has now become much simpler. Considering the ruthlessness with which the establishment is trying to force this drug on the population, the trampling of basic medical ethics, the absence of informed consent, the demonization of millions of Israelis who have chosen not to take the experimental drug, the blood-lust to rob them of their medical autonomy and God-given human rights, the veil of secrecy placed on the protocols, the suppression of information, the misrepresentation of facts, the lack of liability, and how the whole thing stinks to high heaven, the argument no longer needs to be about science.

When people who have done everything to lose our trust and nothing to gain it are desperately trying to inject drugs in people, we should want nothing to do with it.

Aryeh Deri has expressed a desire to go house to house injecting people. Ayelet Shaked has referred to dissenters as vermin. Betzalel Smotrich is eager to punish people and force them to vaccinate. The mayor of Lod wants to deny municipal services to people who don’t vaccinate and compel them to stay home indefinitely. Yuli Edelstein, who studied foreign languages in university, seems a bit underqualified to run the Ministry of Health – unless his experience as a Refusenik makes him the perfect man to force people into compliance. His rhetoric leaves no room for doubt as to his intentions. The Prime Minister himself wants a list of names of all those who haven’t vaccinated, presumably so he can punish them. He has rabbinic approval from Rabbi Steinberg and others who have blessed this horrific tyranny.

He wants names? Put my name at the very top. I fear God more, and will stand for His people.

One final note: many countries around the world, including Japan, Australia, India, and South Korea have all decided not to vaccinate their people at this time. They are waiting to see what happens with the human lab rats in Israel. Are they all crazy conspiracy theorists who are anti-science and don’t value human life?

The commandment to safeguard our lives and the lives of others indeed rings loud in our ears. It compels us to do shev v’al ta’aseh, wait until the protocols are released, the tough questions receive detailed answers, and the public is granted complete medical autonomy without fear of retribution in any way.

Someone who refuses to take a drug for any reason, especially under such a cloud of darkness, is not a criminal. He is responsible. Those who behave like despots to forcibly inject people are the real criminals, and God will judge them for every ounce of suffering they inflict on His creations.

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When All Else Fails, Read the Instructions (that is, the Torah)!

Torah or Tyranny

The history of the human race can mostly be summed up as follows: God creates the world and tells Man the rules. Man breaks the rules, then makes different rules that he thinks will work better or that otherwise suit his desires. Man fails every time.

We live in a generation that considers itself the most enlightened in history. This assertion goes largely unchallenged not because it is true, but because those who are most slighted by this sanctimonious claim – all previous generations – are no longer here to protest it.

While technology has advanced exponentially, it is difficult to argue that the moral state of the human race has advanced in kind, let alone reached historic heights. Consider the state of the world today:

South America is controlled by authoritarian governments and drug cartels. Those who oppose the ruling class tend to be assassinated.

North America is controlled by increasingly draconian governments who serve the interests of large corporations and foreign entities. Censorship and bullying is the norm. The fundamental freedoms citizens used to take for granted have been eroding for many years, and currently hang by a thread. Those who oppose the current ruling class are being branded “domestic terrorists” by the establishment, to justify war against them.

Western Europe is also controlled by increasingly draconian governments, though their citizens had fewer freedoms to begin with. When citizens make large protests, the government considers them the enemy, not a voice to be heard and respected. Those who oppose the ruling class are persecuted.

Eastern Europe is controlled by authoritarian governments and oligarchs. Those who oppose the ruling class tend to wind up in prison or suffer tragic accidents.

The Middle East is controlled by totalitarian governments and dictators.

Israel, which proclaims itself the only democracy in the Middle East, has followed the Western World as it generally does. Hence, its vague allegiance to “democracy” has also been replaced with a draconian government that serves the interests of large corporations and foreign entities. Citizens are pawns with the illusion of rights. More on this later.

Africa is controlled by dictators and powerful tribes.

Asia is controlled by authoritarian governments, totalitarian governments, and dictators. The Chinese totalitarian system seems to be the role model of Western governments.

The overwhelming majority of the human race lives in abject poverty, regular poverty, or is dangerously close. The governments of the world view their citizens as subjects to be exploited, pawns to be manipulated, threats to be eliminated, or nuisances to be controlled. World leaders view laws that restrict their authority not as sacred guideposts, but as obstacles to be wiggled around or removed.

This is the most enlightened generation? This is the result of thousands of years of “progress”?

Capitalism, socialism, communism, democracy, autocracy, and the rest seem very different on the surface, but they all have one thing in common: sooner or later the money and power will be in the hands of a privileged few. Everyone else will struggle to get by, and will live in fear of the establishment.

Even democracy – that great achievement of recent generations – is easy to subvert and corrupt, or simply to vote out of existence. Tyranny is inevitable in democracies as well; it merely takes longer to develop.

This week’s parsha contains a high percentage of the laws God gave the Jewish regarding the societal structure. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss them in depth, but even a cursory reading of the parsha shows the great emphasis on protecting the weak from the strong, integrity of the justice system, and safeguards against corruption.

According to the Torah, leaders are not only equally accountable to the law, they are held to a higher standard than ordinary citizens. With greater power comes not just greater responsibility, but greater accountability. Only God created and – just as critically – enforces such truly just laws. Man-made systems pay lip service to this idea, even as those in power constantly remind us that they play by different rules, if any rules at all. Even in democracies, the ability of citizens to hold their leaders accountable for gross misdeeds is extremely limited at best.

According to the Torah, there is no such thing as the rich having any privileges over the poor. Wealth is a God-given blessing, and a responsibility to help those less fortunate in order to secure continued blessing. Wealth does not confer on people greater status, presumptions of wisdom, or power according the Torah. A wealthy businessman with a multi-million dollar court case must wait his turn if the pauper is there first. Judges are obligated by the Torah to fear no one, favor no one, and to adjudicate as if their own money and lives depend on getting it right, for in fact they do. While they are judging the people, God is judging the judges.

Indeed, fear of Heaven and dependence on God to be actively supervising society are built into our judicial system. A capital case can only be reopened to acquit one found guilty, but never the reverse. This is not because the Torah is against harsh punishment of criminals – just the opposite – but because we recognize that our powers to mete out punishment must be limited in certain ways, and that God is actively involved in the judicial process. We are constantly reminded that we are only servants of God, and our leaders are only custodians of the Torah, to safeguard us from tyranny.

It is no coincidence that man-made systems remove God for the purpose of engaging in tyranny, or co-opt a religious system to terrorize people in God’s name. No man-made system limits the power of its leaders specifically in the name of God, relying on God to pick up where our ability to mete out justice must be constrained. Only in the Torah do we find that the sections describing positions of authority, such as kings, judges, and prophets, are devoted almost entirely to limiting the power of those in these positions.

Couldn’t all of mankind use more of that right now? Why did we ever think we could do better?

Another unique feature of the Torah is that the laws are finite and inviolable. In fact, the prohibition of adding or removing a single commandment is one of the 613 commandments, and a supposed prophet who seeks to add or take away from the Torah is executed as an obvious fraud. Only God could create a system that would be suitable for all times, places, and circumstances. Only divine wisdom could create laws that are permanent and unalterable.

Many people wrongly believe that rabbis have the power to change the Torah, when in fact their role is to teach it, instruct us on how to behave in cases of doubt, and properly apply its inviolable laws to different situations. Our sages have the authority to enact laws only for the sake of safeguarding the Torah; they cannot change a single letter.

Man-made systems are malleable by definition. Whoever created the system has no innate superiority over those who come after him, who will be sure to add new laws and discard old laws as they see fit.

Those who enjoy power in these systems have little better to do with themselves than constantly create new laws, issue new decrees, create a jungle of laws that no one can keep up with, then selectively enforce them against those they wish to suppress. Whatever is a basic right today may very well be criminalized tomorrow. This happens in every man-made system, and it is reaching extremel levels all over the world in our time.

Moreover, man-made systems specialize in vague laws that can be broadly interpreted and selectively enforced for political reasons. Take, for example, laws against “incitement”. What is incitement exactly? Whatever the people in charge want it to mean. The same is true for “endangering national security”, “enemy of the people”, “hate speech”, “causing a public disturbance”, “endangering public health”, “spreading misinformation”, and so much more.

Laws such as these are intentionally obscure to enable those in power to interpret them and apply them as they see fit. Corruption and double standards are inevitable. Anyone can be criminalized at any time.

God’s system stands in direct opposition to this. The laws are not only finite, they are clearly and fully defined through tradition and the interpretive process that were given along with the Torah. While details of commandments are under dispute, there is a clear process for determining a prevailing opinion as well, and there are no vague laws for leaders to interpret to give advantages to some and persecute others. Even a king who wishes to punish someone for treason must submit to a rabbinical court.

In a Torah system, authorities must outright violate the Torah to engage in tyranny; there’s no subterfuge. In man-made systems, they simply call it something else and make it legal.

As we near the end of days, God is making it clear for all to see that there are only two choices: Torah or tyranny. Every world power, representing every system of government, has normalized tyranny all together. There can no longer be any illusions that one system or another will give mankind the freedom it wants and deserves. They can only turn to God.

Many people wrongly believe that the Torah constrains a person, and they prefer to be “free”. We are learning how right Chazal were when they taught that the only truly free person is one who lives according to the Torah. The only truly free system is one that is based on the Torah. Those who try to create a more “open” and free system inevitably descend into tyranny, and it doesn’t take long.

Back to Israel. The great hope of the Jewish people after thousands of years of exile and persecution, the great modern Jewish experiment, has unequivocally failed. Far too many Jews foolishly believed that simply returning to our land was good enough. Israel would be a refuge from the ravages of exile, a guarantee that it would never happen again. Yet now it is happening in Israel itself. The government has turned against its own people and normalized tyranny. The masks are off, and there is nowhere left for them to run.

Even religious Jews believed that settling the land and building Torah-observant communities was good enough. As long as the government basically left them alone, they didn’t need to concern themselves with the overall spiritual character of the country. Now they are learning that Torah needs to be the law of land, and they need to take responsibility to make Israel a truly Jewish state. They can’t just be concerned about themselves and their own four cubits.

Israel’s dysfunctional government, with its eclectic mix of right wing, left wing, religious, non-religious, anti-religious, and many additional factions has historically never agreed on anything. They hate each other. But right now, for the first time in history, they have all united around a single idea: medical tyranny is normal and moral.

People who do not constantly prove that they do not have the flu-like strain of the day should not be allowed in public. People who refuse to be injected with an experimental drug should be demonized and discriminated against. They should not be forced, of course; that’s illegal. But “force” is another one of those words that can be defined and redefined to suit the whims of those in power. The definition is changing on a daily basis. Those clever, man-made laws to prevent tyranny ultimately enable it.

All incumbent political parties openly support this; there is not a single voice of outrage. They differ only in the degree of terror they wish to inflict on non-compliant citizens – all for the greater good, of course. It’s always for the greater good.

This brings us to the final lesson from the Torah system. Only God can decide what is for the greater good. Only God can play God. The tyrants wish to own everything, know everything, control everything, decide who is essential, whose life has value, who should be allowed to participate in society, and to what extent, and turn every God-given human right into a privilege that must be constantly earned by conformity to their edicts.

They want to own the world and take God’s place. But God owns the world, He controls everything, and He doesn’t want to give up His business. The final war is between those who turn to God, and those who want to take God’s place.

All the man-made systems have reached their natural end. All man-made roads lead to tyranny. All of humanity now faces a straightforward choice, regardless of where they live.

It is Torah, or it is tyranny.

Whose side are you on?

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