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Rabbi Sacks: More Than a ‘Crown Rabbi’

Three Sides of Rabbi Sacks

Posted by: Gil Student in Magazine, Musings, Posts Nov 9, 20

by R. Gil Student

The passing of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks zt”l leaves thousands if not millions of people of faith — Orthodox and non-Orthodox, Jewish and gentile — mourning their teacher and source of inspiration. Everyone is unique but some of us, just a few, are irreplaceable. I doubt whether anyone can fill Rabbi Sacks’ oversized role in this world. In this age of disbelief, Rabbi Sacks improbably achieved great success in projecting an uncompromising pride and confidence in the wisdom of Jewish tradition, motivating non-affiliated Jews to come closer to tradition, inspiring faith in people across all nations and religions, and achieving respect for his global message of the societal importance of family, community, morality and religious faith. I know of at least three sides to Rabbi Sacks’ unique role, each of which is challenging but the combination of all three in one person seem quite remarkable.

I. The Inspirer

The first side of Rabbi Sacks is the most recognizable. He was a superbly successful advocate for religion in general and Judaism in particular. Many people fail to realize that Rabbi Sacks actually filled two slightly contradictory roles in doing this. On the one hand, he was the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations, speaking to the Jews of England and beyond. This was no simple matter, since many members of the United Hebrew Congregations had limited Jewish education and observance while many other Jews in England had intense traditional Jewish upbringing. Serving as Chief Rabbi meant balancing the messages that inevitably affected all Jews. Rabbi Sacks’ legendary weekly divrei Torah reflect this balance. The insights are, on the one hand, built on the text and classical commentaries. On the other hand, they incorporate stories and insights from philosophy, psychology and social science. His massive erudition and eloquence, his ability to speak to the heart and mind at the same time, gave his Torah lessons more gravity to the average reader. The combined impact of his messages are inherently traditional but dressed in contemporary garb. The net effect was spectacular, resonating with traditional Jews as well as those non-Orthodox with little education and even academic scholars of Judaism.

At his core, Rabbi Sacks was a story-teller. He had a rare sense for the right message for the time. His book, A Letter in the Scroll, is the most effective outreach book I have encountered. Carefully sidestepping all the difficult philosophical and scientific challenges that face many outreach arguments, Rabbi Sacks builds an emotionally and intellectually compelling case for the beauty and excitement of Jewish life. The Jewish story is the most exciting story in world history. Don’t you want to be a part of that story, a letter in the scroll? This book has changed countless lives by refocusing the Jewish story away from obscurity and persecution into a vibrant tale that enhances pride, instills faith in the Torah and Sages, and describes the excitement of living a committed Jewish life.

I remember once attending a shiur Rabbi Sacks gave on sippur yetzi’as Mitzrayim, a classic Pesach topic full of lomdus. Many of the attendees clearly had limited yeshiva background. Rabbi Sacks mesmerized the audience and asked a classical question based on a contradiction of Torah texts, reviewed answers of Rishonim and suggested a resolution worthy of any Acharon. He did this all without anyone noticing the technical weight he was carrying. To all onlookers, he seemed to be telling stories about Pesach, Jewish life and eternal spiritual aspirations. It was a master performance that engaged experienced yeshiva students and complete novices at the same time, commanding everyone’s full attention for a complete hour. Most of his Jewish writing functions in this way, conveying Divrei Torah along with inspiration, dressed in stories about philosophy and social science. He used new media — print, audio, video and animation — long before most rabbis began experimenting with them. Personally, even though I prefer reading, sometimes I listen to a recording of the written text just to hear his elegant accent and dramatic intonations make the message come alive even more. Rabbi Sacks was a master of enhancing his message through wise use of the medium.

Rabbi Sacks saw his role also as an advocate for religion in general society. Secularism is now the majority ideology throughout the Western World and religious belief of any kind is subject to ridicule. Most religious leaders are in retreat. Rabbi Sacks, through the force of his own celebrity and charm, defeated the cynicism of atheism and secularism with sincerity and introduced a generation of non-believers to the necessity of faith for both individual and societal flourishing. With society breaking down around us, Rabbi Sacks proposed a return to a covenantal community. He used his ample skills of Torah interpretation, combined them with a keen sociological analysis of the problems facing society, and produced a plan for societal reinvigoration. In a number of award-winning books, worldwide lectures and media appearances, Rabbi Sacks made a compelling case for traditional religious values.

II. The Rabbi’s Rabbi

A second side to Rabbi Sacks was his private interaction. He mentored young rabbis, offering sound advice and encouragement. The rabbinate is a difficult career. As the Chief Rabbi, and as someone with experience as a successful pulpit rabbi and educator, Rabbi Sacks had a store of experience and — of course — stories to help young rabbis navigate their vocations.

However, Rabbi Sacks was more than a rabbinic advisor. He was a charmer. Rabbi Sacks was one of those people with the natural ability to always have the right word for every circumstance. He knew how to make every individual feel like the most important person in the room. Some people work a crowd to network and establish business contacts. Rabbi Sacks worked a crowd to inspire and uplift.

I remember the first time I met Rabbi Sacks personally. It was the New York launch of the Koren Sacks Siddur, with his translation and commentary. Rabbi Shaul Robinson of Lincoln Square Synagogue, a British rabbi serving in New York, arranged for me to walk Rabbi Sacks to his seat as he entered the room. I had at most 20 seconds to speak with Rabbi Sacks during which he made me feel like his partner in inspiring the world and encouraged me to continue serving Klal Yisrael in my own way. He later signed my siddur with a genuine smile, solidifying the personal connection. Every time I saw him after that, he recognized my face and greeted me with great joy, offering encouragement that was specific enough to let me know that he was truly invested in my success. While I would like to feel special, I am told he treated every young rabbi this way, offering encouragement, advice and assistance. He gave blurbs to new books like Rav Yosef Shaul Nathanson (author of the Sho’el U-Meishiv and jokingly called the “Sar Ha-Maskim”) gave haskamos, rabbinic approbations. He wanted people to succeed, books to sell, Torah teachers to solidify their achievements.

III. The Early Sacks

Rabbi Sacks’ third role became apparent during the early years when he served as a shul rabbi and educator. His abundance of natural talent led to success and a larger, more prestigious post until he rose to the position of Principal of Jews’ College and next in line for the position of Chief Rabbi. During those years, Rabbi Sacks was heavily involved in the publication of the magazine L’eyla, published by the Office of the Chief Rabbi and Jews’ College. As would be expected from a Cambridge-trained philosopher, he wrote about issues of the day in Jewish thought and reviewed important Jewish books, including the initial books published by Artscroll.

Perhaps surprising to many people, Rabbi Sacks also wrote the magazine’s contemporary halakhah column. In this column, he surveyed recently published responsa on a variety of interesting topics. For example, he discusses the permissibility of cosmetic surgery based on responsa of Rav Moshe Feinstein, Rav Eliezer Waldenburg and Rav Chaim David Halevi. When the first three volumes of Rav Ovadiah Yosef’s Yechaveh Da’as were published, Rabbi Sacks summarized a selection of responsa, offering readers a tour through the otherwise dizzying encyclopedic discussions about, for example, whether a kohen who killed while serving as a soldier can continue blessing the congregation, whether to recite a blessing on seeing a president, and more. In another issue, Rabbi Sacks contrasted the views of Rav Ovadiah Yosef and Rav Moshe Feinstein on the rabbi saying a devar Torah in between aliyos, summarized Rav Ovadiah Yosef’s responsum on whether the obligation to unload a donkey applies to a stranded motorist, analyzed Rav Eliyahu Bakshi Doron’s responsum on mourning a divorced parent who had severed relations with the child and forgiven all honor, and explored Rav Dr. Mordechai Halperin’s article on naming a baby before a delayed circumcision.

These articles demonstrate a rabbi fluent in the language of halakhah and capable of presenting to others the core ideas and sources of cutting edge responsa. In other writings of this era, we find Rabbi Sacks building arguments based on a deep reservoir of halakhic literature. His book, One People?: Tradition, Modernity and Jewish Unity, uses halakhah at length in order to articulate an authentic Jewish view on what pluralism is and is not. At the first Orthodox Forum conference convened by Yeshiva University in 1989, whose proceedings were published in a book titled Rabbinic Authority and Personal Authority, Rabbi Sacks presented a paper arguing against rampant creativity in halakhic decision-making in general, and against women’s ordination in particular, based on among other sources a teshuvah of the Chasam Sofer which Rabbi Sacks explains and expands with great perception. Perhaps most importantly, he rules out any kind of philosophical or functional approach to halakhah, arguing for a traditional fidelity to the sources and precedents.

Put differently, while not a halakhic decisor himself, Rabbi Sacks was intimately familiar with the ways of the leading decisors and a vocal defender of the traditional method of reaching halakhic decisions. He was a halakhic traditionalist. In addition to his opposition to women’s ordination mentioned above, in another of his contemporary halakhah columns, Rabbi Sacks covered the 1985 controversy over Women’s Prayer Groups. Rabbi Sacks discussed the prooftexts and critiques but gave the final word to Rav Hershel Schachter and Rav J. David Bleich, both of whom strongly opposed this innovation.

This was the early Rabbi Sacks, before he rose to the position of Chief Rabbi. He was a defender of Orthodoxy and tradition against liberal agitators. Once he ascended community-wide public position, he seems to have withdrawn from public discussion of practical halakhah, leaving that to the London Beth Din. He instead focused his attention on using his unique voice to inspire global religious revival. A wise man plays to his strengths and Rabbi Sacks was among the wisest of his generation, sharpening his already keen philosophical and homiletical skills for his later career. You have to look with great care at his later writings to see his earlier traditionalist halakhic views peek out from hiding.

With the passing of Rabbi Sacks we have lost a unique, multi-faceted voice of religious passion. Within this void, we each have to work harder to inspire ourselves and others. However, thanks to his prodigious creation of audio and video recordings, Rabbi Sacks characteristically leaves us with a new interpretation of the Talmudic phrase “sifsosav dovevos ba-kever, his lips move in the grave” (Yevamos 97a), and he can continue to inspire us and future generations. May his memory and teachings continue to generate passion toward greater religious devotion.

From Torah Musings, here.

Beware Corona Conspiracist Kettle Logic

Bilge to the Right, Bilge to the Left, and Not a Drop to Drink

Plumbing the Crankosphere
• NOVEMBER 12, 2020

That wretched virus has spawned great gushing waves of confusion regarding what is really happening. This column, a reliable journalistic source of a high order, has therefore gathered from other reliable sources what we genuinely know about the epidemic. Henceforth you will need to read nothing more on the matter. It is all here.

Every morning I read percipient sites that, unlike the major media, are not in the pay of George Soros. The following is a compendium of purely factual findings, devoid of spin or agenda. The interested reader can search on any of them and find large amounts of corroborative content.

The virus was invented in a biowarfare laboratory in Wuhan or, alternatively, in some other kind of lab (or perhaps simultaneously in both kinds of lab) and escaped, presumably yearning for freedom. It also came about because the Chinese were eating infected bats. It was also deliberately planted in the US by Beijing to destroy the American economy, decimate the population, and make us into Communist slaves. Further, it is being used by the Deep State to destroy the economy and let the government make us into federal slaves.

Less plausibly, which is saying something, it was a bio attack on China by the United States, which sent it to China using an infected soccer team as vector. This seems odd, since the American biowarriors who would have had to grow it would have known that it would come back to the US immediately on the hundreds of monthly flights, and also that the US was defenseless against plagues. Maybe they were distracted and didn’t think of this.

None of the above matters since the virus in fact does not exist. Yes, that’s right. There is no virus, and in any event it is no worse than the seasonal flu. The plandemic, or panicdemic, is a fairy tale concocted by the Davos crowd (the familiar tone is to persuade you that I get drunk with presidents and prime ministers on Saturday nights to destroy world economies so that Bill Gates and George Soros can take away our freedoms, impose socialism, which is very bad, and make us into communist slaves. It is also intended to depopulate the world, doubtless a hard slog for a virus that doesn’t exist, but it may be a very robust nonexistent virus. Since if the number of dead reached two million, which it hasn’t, this would be four percent of the fifty million croakees attributed to the Spanish flu, and essentially zero percent of the world’s population of the earth, it would seem that the Coronavirus needs work under warranty. Anyway, the dead supposedly killed by the virus actually died of underlying causes, such as traffic accidents, diabetes, and obesity.

The alleged dead in truth died not of Covid but of underlying causes, such as motorcycle crashes, diabetes, and obesity. Also of vitamin D deficiency caused by staying inside because of the lockdowns. These made them cranky and depressed, further lowering their defenses, so that, apparently, the mere thought of a virus killed them. The alleged dead are being stored in refrigerated morgue trucks, which are fake news.

Actually, the virus is a plot to let Big Pharma make a killing, so to speak. The columnist Pepe Escobar (no relation to Pablo) (probably) says that (unimpeachable) sources in Paris revealed that the French government knows that hydroxyquinone (HCQ) is a miracle cure but that the government is suppressing this information so the Pharma companies can find a vaccine and get rich. Richer. If I were a reporter, I would ask, “The government? All of it, hundreds of thousands of people? Only some of them? Which ones? How do you know? Evidence? Phone numbers?” But I am not a reporter.

The reader unfamiliar with the dread depths of the demonic darkness lurking behind the façade of international finance capitalism may find it implausible that Paris would let tens of thousands of Frenchmen die and the economy collapse to benefit drug companies. Plausibility is an overrated virtue. Behind all of this is Microsoft. Do not underestimate the evil in the heart of Bill Gates, the Redmond Sauron, a geek of a thousand envenomed claws, who wants to make us all into Communist slaves and switch to Bing.

Now consider hydroxyquinone, Cipro, and zinc. These have been shown by numerous studies to be a miracle cure for Covid when used together. A google search will easily find these studies. The former President of the United States, than whom there can be no more sober and trustworthy source has endorsed HCQ. HCQ is a well-known, cheap, easily produce prophylaxis against malaria. Uninformed skeptics might wonder why Cipro, an anti-bacterial, and HCQ, an antiplasmodial, would work as antivirals. But it works, as many sites say, but doesn’t, according to medical authorities, probably in the pay of Bill Gates. Zinc was once widely used in making flashlight batteries. Anyway, that all the world’s governments, knowing of this proven research, do not launch massive distribution of the miracle cure can only mean that they are all working for Big Pharma.

There is evidence that those advocating the use of zinc want to make us all into Communist flashlight batteries, but even libertarians view this with skepticism. Some fear that the government may force us all to have voltage checks.

Now we come to countermeasures. A quick web search reveals that masks are ineffective, actually increase vulnerability to the virus, which in any case does not exist, and reduce the flow of oxygen to the brain, causing cognitive damage. The insistence by government that we wear them instills reflexive obedience to government, thus facilitating our conversion into Communist slaves.

Vaccines, though, are the real threat to liberty. Vaccines are known to have lethal effects, for example having been used by government to wipe out smallpox and polio. Critics point out that with minor modification they could be used to depopulate the world, presumably so that Big Pharma could do something or other. At least one site has revealed that a vaccine potentially could actually reprogram our DNA, having I’m not sure just what effects but perhaps making us into reptiles or infected bats.

Other articles, mostly by actual doctors or men who say they are, point out that we have no way of knowing what is in the vaccines. One insidious possibility is said to be nanoparticles. I don’t know just what these are, but they must be very small, and they are said to migrate to the brain and diminish free will. In many people this would not be noticeable, so you can see the deviousness. These authors urge the population under no circumstances to use masks or accept the vaccine.

Other experts say that vaccines might contain computer chips. These could be used to track us, say some, or others say to control us, making us into socialist slaves. My own theory is that if zinc made us into flashlight batteries, the resulting current could power the chips, but I don’t want to speculate irresponsibly.

Having spent my working life in journalism, I still have(unimpeachable) sources. They tell me that to their certain knowledge Bill Gates has built an underground factory to make injectable chips. The factory is about midway on his tunnel from Area 51 to Roswell. It reportedly uses the labor of undocumented aliens. Note that the mainstream media have not uttered a single word about this factory. Only tightly organized collusion of the media can explain this perfectly maintained silence

Things are worse than we think. But anyway you understand the virus now.

From Unz, here.

How Baalei Hatosafos Redefined ‘Moreh Halacha Befnei Rabo’

293) A TOSAFIST PERSPECTIVE – ‘WE HAVE BOOKS, WE DON’T NEED TEACHERS OR PERMISSION TO TEACH’:

Sunday, 6 September 2020

INTRODUCTION:

Around the thirteenth century, while most of Europe was becoming comfortingly institutionalised in their communal structures, a number of Tosafists were proclaiming the right to remain independent and autonymous both in their institutions and also in their thinking.

In this article, based extensively on the research of Rabbi Professor Ephraim Kanarfogel[1], we will examine the processes involved in establishing an academy in Ashkenaz (northern France and Germany) during the Tosafist period (c. 1100-1300) with an emphasis on how some rabbis were determined to remain unconstrained by the establishment.

Before we examine the protocols of opening up an academy in Tosafist Ashkenaz, let us first turn westwards and look at Spain during that same time period.

SPAIN:

In Spain, it was the leading scholars who – in principle – were in charge of granting permission for an academy to open and operate. Once the scholars approved of the candidates to run the yeshivot, it was up to the individual communities to appoint a particular Rosh Yeshiva and pay him. In Spain, the various communities always appointed and paid the approved candidates for their institutions, whether teachers or communal rabbis.[2]

But this was not the case in northern France and Germany.

ASHKENAZ – NORTHERN FRANCE AND GERMANY:

In Ashkenaz, the Tosafist academies were run independently as small and private institutions. Very often the school was in the actual home of the Rosh Yeshiva who had established it in the first place.

As a sign of independence, it was named after the Rosh Yeshiva and not after the town or city in which it operated. But this independence came at a price – the teachers were not paid and the students received no stipends.

Kanarfogel writes:

“Unlike Spanish Jewish society, Ashkenazic Jewry believed, as a matter of religious principle, that it was inappropriate to offer any direct financial support to its scholars.”[3]

He points out that, in northern France, this was not a uniquely Jewish state of affairs  as similar practices were found in the Cathedral schools, which were also named after their teachers and not the towns.

In both Jewish and Christian communities, the institution had no real energy of its own  – as modern universities like Harvard and Oxford, for example, do –  but the personality of the individual teacher was the only determining factor to draw the student.

In both Jewish and Christian circles, the student referred to the teacher under whom he studied, and not the place where he studied. This is evidenced by the fact that when the teacher died or moved on, the academies simply closed down.

Then things began to change as a more top-heavy and bureaucratic system developed.

From around 1200,  Christian schools required accreditation through a licentia docendi in order to operate and some of the earlier autonomy was lost due to the institutionalisation of teaching.

Similarly in Jewish communities, the semicha or ordination compliance was required before a school could open. Slowly the teachers lost their independence and certainly by the fifteenth century, Ashkenaz had a well established and an institutionalised structure in their Torah academies.

There is some debate as to exactly when the shift from independence to the institutionalisation of schools began in Ashkenaz, but clearly, some Tosafists were intent on perpetuating their autonomy for as long as possible.

What follows are three examples of Tosafists who held out for as long as they could, in an attempt at maintaining their independence:

1) R. SHMUEL AND HIS BROTHER R. MOSHE OF EVREUX:

In a text ascribed to the thirteenth century Tosafist brothers R. Shmuel and R. Moshe of Evreux[4], in Normandy – northern France – it is evident that academies in that region opened without permission and the teachers sometimes openly went against the rulings of their rabbis.

‘WE HAVE BOOKS, WE DON’T NEED TEACHERS OR PERMISSION TO TEACH’:

The Tosafist brothers of Evreux wrote that it was no longer necessary for students to uphold the views of their teachers. This was because teachers were no longer the only source of the law. They now lived in an era where books and texts abounded and were thus not beholden to their rabbis as the sole purveyors of Torah knowledge:

“For the Talmudic texts, the commentaries, the novellae, the [halakhic] compositions, they are the teachers of men. And all [is determined] by one’s perspicacity [discernment].

Thus, it was usual in their locale (be-‘iram) that a student opened his own study hall…without concern for [the Talmudic dictum that] ‘one who decides a matter of law in his teacher’s presence is punishable by death’.

Similarly, the student, by means of superior reasoning, could contradict his teacher[‘s ruling].”[5]

Kanarfogel explains this interesting Tosafist text as follows:

“The brothers maintained that due to the vicissitudes of time, written sources had replaced human instructors as the most effective teachers. As such, there was no longer a concept of rabbo muvhhaq (one’s major teacher) for whom deep respect or honour had to be shown….

A student was no longer required to seek his teacher’s approval in order to decide matters of law in his presence or to open an academy in his town.”

Continue reading…

From Kotzk Blog, here.

Replace Every Appearance of ‘Leader’ with ‘RABBI’ So the Article Makes Sense…

Opinion: Of Masks, Exaggerations, and Gross Misrepresentations

8:15 am

By Rabbi Yehoishophot Oliver

rabbioliver@gmail.com

We are living through terrifying times, and I am not talking about Covid-19.

We are seeing draconian measures enforced in the western world that are harsher than any we’ve ever seen in our lifetimes. On the face of it, this should awaken alarm and skepticism of the explanations we’ve been given for this vast expansion of government power. Yet many people, including in the Jewish community and including in the Orthodox Jewish community, see no problem with these measures, and they willingly encourage and enforce them. Some even do so with zeal and fanaticism, to the point of informing—of reporting to the police anyone who dares disobey the government.

And they’re doing so based on a fundamentally true principle.

However, I believe that in this case, the principle is being grossly and dangerously misapplied.

This is the basic principle in Jewish law that pikuach nefesh, the preservation of life, supersedes all other concerns, even otherwise strict obligations under Jewish law. Based on a doctor’s rulings, one can desecrate the Shabbos (Sabbath), eat non-kosher food, eat on the holy fast day of Yom Kippur. And so on.

During the Covid-19 crisis, community leaders have been telling us that we must obey the government health experts, and invoking Jewish law to support their claim. After all, Jewish law says that one should listen to health experts, to the point that one even violates what is normally forbidden based on their word.

This message is not really new and different. This is a basic principle in Jewish law. We do not need any great scholarship to know that danger to life is an overriding principle; any schoolchild knows this.

The issue is not whether we should listen to experts in matters of health. Rather, the fundamental issue is which experts we should listen to. Who exactly is making the threat assessment? Are they truly reliable? Could they have conflicts of interest that would call into question or even entirely discredit their supposedly authoritative opinions? Are the leaders asking these questions?

Yes of course, safety and health are paramount priorities. But those who have studied the development of totalitarian regimes understand that it is for this very reason that the claim of saving the people from some scary danger is a perfect tool for control and manipulation by people acting in bad faith with a sinister, nefarious agenda.

We are being told to obey the “public health” experts. But it really doesn’t take much time to research the history of “public health” and see just how correct and reliable it has been in the past (e.g., see here, here, here, and here). Ten minutes of research on Google will lead you down a rabbit hole of many past incidents when public health officials not only got it wrong, but they deliberately lied—with regard to pesticides, AIDS, firearms, and much more.

More generally and fundamentally, public health itself is a part of the political system, and politics is inherently about money, power, and control. So public health is not and cannot ever be about pure science and truth.

The medical industry in general is joined at the hip to Big Pharma, which has been exposed as controlling medical school and medicines in order to maximize profit, not healing and good health. Those who offer cheaper, more natural, and healthier alternatives to expensive synthetic pharmaceutical products are persecuted and marginalized, their businesses are outlawed, and they are even sometimes killed.

It would be one thing if these leaders were naïve in their health decisions about their own lives. It’s another thing entirely if they impose this naivete on the community, especially when they stubbornly refuse to listen to those who try to point out that they’ve been misinformed.

These leaders are not doing their due diligence to question the narrative we’re being told. And this negligence is even more egregious now than when the scare began.

The truth has increasingly emerged that we were sold a hoax: Covid-19 is no more dangerous than the seasonal flu, and likely less so. We were given false information about the death toll in Italy. The numbers were padded and governments worldwide are giving unethical financial incentives to hospital administrations to falsely classify deaths from other causes as Covid-19 deaths. The CDC issued directives to classify deaths assumed to be from Covid-19 even without a test. The tests are utterly faulty and don’t even test for Covid-19. The original mathematical model was grossly exaggerated and completely flawed from the outset. The media is using crisis actors to hype up the fear. According to testimonies, the hospitals in New York, the supposed hotspot for Covid-19, were systematically murdering the Covid-19 patients and that is in fact what was causing the higher death count there back in March and April.

Yet all these facts are ignored by the governments, so they are also ignored by the community leaders. This is surreal. The governments clearly have a deceptive agenda, so why are the leaders playing along?

These are often the same folks who told us to obey the “health experts” with regard to vaccines, despite the numerous reports coming out that many children are severely injured by vaccines. But because the government ignores that and mandates the vaccines, these leaders push us to conform and not to try to find exemptions, nor are they willing to represent us on the political front to push for vaccine exemptions. Some have even actively supported not allowing religious schools to accept religious vaccine exemptions legal in that state.

They are the blind leading the blind.

Their blindness is astonishing.

It could be simply a blind spot due to a naive overestimation of the wisdom of the official public health officials, due to the psychological influence of the inflated status of “official culture” to which all citizens are susceptible. But we expect more of our supposed leaders.

The truth about the other side of the story is now so widespread that it’s hard to think that this attachment to the official story is not willful. It is unpleasant but unavoidable to speculate on what motivates this irrational compliance. It could be concern about their image and a desire not to be seen as “bucking the system” and breaking the taboo against criticizing the government. Many are surely affected by a perceived desire to keep their positions, a desire for their schools and synagogues to receive the continued support of wealthy patrons or to receive continued government grants and funding to ease the financial burden on their institutions. This essentially means, sadly, that these leaders are compromised and corrupted. I would even suggest that until they openly admit their failure and apologize, they should no longer be trusted to be consulted on anything, as they have proven themselves incompetent.

This phenomenon of blind acceptance of the official government narrative on matters of health is shameful and terrifying. Our trusted leaders are blindly following the government-approved “health experts”, and the sheeple are blindly following the leaders, so we have a serious problem.

This is a very slippery slope.

The problem is the automatic conformity. All based on an endless, constantly repeated argument from authority. All without considering dissenting medical voices and blatant conflicts of interest. All based on the presumption that in matters of public health policy in our institutions, the government and only the government knows best and therefore it must call all the shots.

These people are not thinking clearly; they’re obeying like robots. They’re not willing to consider anything that deviates from the official narrative. They’re not willing to listen to an argument presenting reason and evidence and adjust their opinion accordingly. They automatically dismiss anyone questioning the official narrative as a nutcase. They’re viewing the official narrative as religious dogma, all while failing to stand up for our human and religious rights.

They said that we needed to keep the shuls (synagogues) closed because opening might endanger lives, now they say we must submit to masks, plexiglass, and social distancing in shuls and mass testing of our children, and soon they will doubtless say that we must all submit to a fast-tracked Covid vaccine. All because of health.

But I guarantee you that if you would ask these same leader and administrators to take some action about the even potential danger of the Wifi in the schools or the 5G towers (which were being installed behind our backs right while we were in lockdown) right near the schools, they would give you a funny look and dismiss your concerns. If you would say that the documented harms of vaccines declared by SCOTUS is reason not to mandate them and to allow parents to decline mandates, many would dismiss your arguments and tell you to obey the government.

Nor do we ever hear statements on the harm from radiation from cellphones, on the harm from psychiatric drugs, or on the harm from a sugary diet of processed foods.

So the claim that this is about health and safety—“pikuach nefesh”—is disingenuous. What’s really going on here is blind obedience to government, not to true, unbiased health experts.

Continue reading…

From Matzav, here.