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Of Those Who Deprive Jewish Girls of Lashon Hakodesh

Don’t You Want To Be Eulogized?

November 28, 2016 

I once had an extremely unsettling conversation that left its marks on me until this very day.

[I wish to note the following disclaimer: as disdainful as some of these sentiments may sound, they did not come from a malicious place, but from a place of having been programmed as such by their respective society. Please understand that their openness and honesty were so genuine that the feeling left behind was cordial, even if it did not end in agreement.]

My wife and I once hosted acquaintances we had met while visiting a die-hard Chassidic enclave, one that was extreme even when compared to my wife’s own Chassidic circles.  Mr. and Mrs. Guest work in quite a successful business that they themselves own. They were both pleasantly intelligent and educated, and both relatively close in age to my wife and I. As is usually the case, our conversation quickly turned from small talk into an intense conversation on Jewish philosophy. At a certain point, my wife turned to Mrs. Guest and asked her, “what do you think?”. She quickly responded, “I am not educated enough in this matter, in order to have my own opinion”. We didn’t think twice about her response, and the conversation just flowed on to the next topic.

It was only after the third such remark from Mrs. Guest, that my wife finally asked her, “what do you mean when you say you aren’t educated enough? Have you never studied the Chumash?”. Shaking her head, Mrs. Guest replied, “I don’t even know how to read the Chumash, so of course I have never studied it!”. She proceeded to explain that in her community, women receive a normal secular education, along with a rigorous “home education” which includes learning how to cook, sew and knit, but that they are absolutely forbidden from studying Torah texts of any kind! She couldn’t even read Hebrew, let alone study it!

Immediately, Mr. Guest – her husband, piped up and said, “of course she doesn’t learn Torah. That is a man’s job! A woman’s job is to listen to her husband, clean the house, cook her family food, and maybe help with the livelihood. Why does she need to know how to learn?”

At this point, I could not contain myself any longer, and burst out: “you really believe this? You really believe that even in this day and age, Jewish women can know about everything – secular studies, finances, celebrities, brand names – but their very own Torah, the one Hashem taught them first, they should not know?!”

In perhaps one of the simplest, most honest responses I have ever received, he replied, “yes, of course. A woman who thinks she knows so much will soon enough try to become independent and will no longer be able to be controlled.”

I had never heard someone – at least not in this generation – be as honest about how he really feels. Putting aside my utter disdain for just a moment, I asked, “where should she know about her Judaism from?”. “From her husband”, he replied.

“And if, her husband is not a Torah scholar and does not know?”, I retorted.

“Most husbands are not Torah scholars! But it is better that she listen to her husband violate a Jewish law, than that she should be able to reach such decisions on her own. It is unbecoming of a Jewish woman to be educated in Torah matters; such women are very dangerous.”

“My wife seems “dangerous to you”?

I don’t wish to continue relating our conversation. I simply wish for you, my dear reader, to be aware that such illnesses and ignorance still exist in the world. Even I, the one in the story, have still not fully comprehended the gravity of the situation following this conversation.

Sarah Immenu’s Passing

In Parashat Chayeh Sarah, we read of the passing of Sarah Immenu.

“And the life of Sarah was one hundred years and twenty years and seven years; [these were] the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died in Kiriat Arba, which is Chevron, in the land of Canaan, and Avraham came to eulogize Sarah and to bewail her.” (Bereshit 23:1-2)

Of course Avraham Avinu came to eulogize Sarah and bewail her? What is the Torah trying to teach us?

Eulogies in the Shulchan Aruch

As I sat and pondered this question on Friday night, I was immediately reminded of the words of Maran, Rabbi Yosef Karo, in his Shulchan Aruch (Yoreh De’ah 344):

1. “It is a great Mitzvah to eulogize a deceased individual, in a manner which is befitting them.

And it is a Mitzvah to raise ones voice and to speak heartbreaking words in order to increase the tears and to remember his praises.

…they recount his good deeds… and if he does not have good deeds…they should not recount anything.”

2. “Just as they eulogize the men, so to they eulogize the women, in a manner which is befitting them”.

7. “The bride – they eulogize her [by recounting] the deeds of her father, or the deeds of her husband.”

The assumption in Maran’s generation was that a bride, a young woman, was illiterate in Torah and therefore did not have any of her own good deeds to recount. She was unlearned, uneducated, unable to act intelligently in matters of good deeds, and therefore the mourners did not have anything to recount if she passed.

Of course, this perhaps wasn’t a situation which Maran appreciated – but it was just the fact on the ground in his generation.

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From Rabbi Yonatan Halevy, here.

COVID: Can One Still Make Aliyah? (Or ‘Come, THEN Ask Permission to Stay’?)

Exceptional Circumstances for Entering Israel

UPDATE: See new additional exceptions issued on July 12

Since the beginning of the Corona crisis, foreigners have been banned from entering Israel. Throughout this period, Chaim V’Chessed has been heavily involved in obtaining permission for non-Israelis to enter Israel in certain situations. Our efforts on behalf of student visa families have been well documented.

There are numerous exceptional circumstances, in which non-Israeli citizens seek to enter the country. These include family members seeking to attend weddings of their siblings or children, mourners wishing to participate in the funerals of loved ones, and other life and death situations.

A constant challenge has been the lack of clearly delineated guidelines. Over the past few months, we have persistently entreated Interior Ministry officials to issue cogent guidelines, and preferably in English.

On Sunday June 14, the Interior Ministry finally responded with a one-page Hebrew document outlining the rules for exceptional entry permission. We continue to urge the Ministry to issue these guidelines in English, as well.

The Hebrew document can be viewed here.

Bear in mind, that is not sufficient to belong to one of these categories. One must receive written permission from the Foreign Ministry in order to enter Israel.

The following groups are addressed by these rules:

Foreign Spouses of Israeli Citizens:

Foreign spouses of Israeli citizens may receive permission to enter Israel.

However, the Israeli citizen must also be a current resident of Israel. If he/she holds Israeli citizenship but currently resides abroad, the spouse will not receive permission.

Furthermore, we have seen that authorities commonly require that the couple be listed as married in the Israeli Population Registry. A foreign marriage certificate is often insufficient. This has created difficulties for Israelis who have recently married foreigners abroad, near or during the Corona crisis. These couples have no way to register their marriages with Israel (consulates and embassies are closed), and hence, their applications are frequently denied. We are working with government officials to resolve this issue.

Relatives Attending Weddings in Israel:

A chassan or kalla marrying an Israeli citizen, as well as their parents, grandparents and siblings can obtain permission to enter Israel. Please note: Chaim V’Chessed has learned that permission is not granted to brother or sisters in law.

Relatives Attending Funerals in Israel:

Mourners may travel to Israel for the funeral or shiva of immediate relatives. Here too, we have found that permission is often not granted to in-law children. However, the rules state plainly that mourners and their spouses can be allowed to enter.

While all travelers must quarantine for fourteen days upon arrival in Israel, permission can be obtained from the Health Ministry to attend the funeral.

Furthermore, despite the fourteen-day quarantine requirement, the Health Ministry sometimes grants permission for mourners to enter the country for a very short time, up to 48 hours, and to leave immediately thereafter.

Olim Chadashim:

People in the process of making aliya are permitted to enter Israel. However, here too, there are numerous complications. With governmental offices shuttered across the globe, many basic documents needed for aliya are unobtainable. Nefesh B’Nefesh, with whom we work closely with, is making great efforts to alleviate some of these difficulties.

Applications for these exceptional circumstances must be made through your nearest Israeli embassy or consulate. For a complete list of Israeli outposts, see here.

From Chaim V’Chessed, here.

American BLM Riots Even Worse Than You Thought…

Stop pretending the BLM protests were peaceful

Are journalists deliberately ignoring the effects of these devastating riots?

BY 
July 16, 2020

Having spent the past month traveling around the United States — from major cities to the countryside — the scale of the ‘movement’ which erupted in late May after the death of George Floyd is almost incomprehensible. According to the New York Times, which relays their finding with obvious excitement, the ‘movement’ (its precise contours seldom defined) “may be the largest” in U.S. history.

That is certainly plausible. In which case, it would presumably be important to document how ordinary Americans, especially those most directly affected, perceive the “movement” in question.

Scan almost any of the popular media coverage over the past six weeks and you’ll find that journalists have been steadfast in their depiction of “protesters” as unassailably “peaceful.” While the vast majority of those who attended a state-backed demonstration or some other event spurred by the ‘movement’ are unlikely to have committed any acts of physical destruction, the term “peaceful protest” doesn’t seem to quite capture the impact of a society-wide upheaval that included, as a key component, mass riots — the magnitude of which have not been seen in the U.S. since at least the 1960s.

From large metro areas like Chicago and Minneapolis/St. Paul, to small and mid-sized cities like Fort Wayne, Indiana and Green Bay, Wisconsin, the number of boarded up, damaged or destroyed buildings I have personally observed — commercial, civic, and residential — is staggering. Keeping exact count is impossible. One might think that a major media organisation such as the New York Times would use some of their galactic journalistic resources to tally up the wreckage for posterity. But roughly six weeks later, and such a tally is still nowhere to be found.

A standard retort one often hears is that “the riots” must not be conflated with “the protests,” which is technically accurate in certain contexts. But the distinction is not as obvious as the media like to make out. In many locations, police and fire services were diverted to accommodate these massive protests, which in turn created a vacuum that enabled the outbreak of riotous activity. As one resident of Minneapolis explained to me, emergency services told him that they would simply be unavailable during the weekend of 29-31 May, while other locals recounted with amazement that police were totally absent as their neighbourhoods burned.

In Milwaukee, a man described being chased down by rioters after getting off the bus on his way home from work. He saw no difference between protesters and rioters; the flippant idea that these groups can be so neatly disentangled is wrong.

This view is just as likely to be espoused by black people and other minorities as anyone else (the Milwaukee man was black), which renders the media’s strident insistence to depict the ‘movement’ as entirely peaceful incongruous with the perceptions of working-class Americans (of all races). So many of them experienced what transpired more as a painful tragedy than any kind of wondrous harmony.

Indeed, the resulting destruction may have set their majority-minority neighbourhoods back economically for months or years, if not longer. Most had already been struggling due to the pandemic, with the riots interrupting fragile reopening plans. To exclude the perspectives of these people from popular media narratives amounts to a kind of purposefully obfuscatory, moralising snobbery. Talk about ‘erasure’.

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From Unherd, here.

Corona: Israeli State Lying With Statistics

You Can’t Trust The Numbers or the Government That Relies on Them

24 Tammuz 5780

The numbers being quoted in the media are completely useless for determining the true scope of the pandemic in Israel.  And yet the politicians are threatening the citizens with all kinds of punitive measures based on the situation as perceived through these skewed statistics.  We’ve already seen people harassed on the streets by the police; whole neighborhoods locked down; people forced to leave home and go to “coronavirus hotels.”  Limits on activities have already been renewed with promises of High Holy Days being a repeat of Pesach and threats of synagogue and yeshivah closures once again.The inmates who have taken charge of the asylum tout “record” numbers of infected and “record” numbers of serious cases, but it is impossible to get a true accounting of the real numbers as the reports are contradictory depending on where you look for them.  (For example today’s count of new cases was either 1200+ or 1500+ depending on where you were looking.)Recently, I quoted Dr. Yoav Yehezkelli who said: “What matters is not the total number of patients, but the number of severe illnesses and intubated patients. As long as these figures are under control, the situation is good.”

The constantly increasing number of overall cases is clearly the result of increased testing [Health Ministry said set to reduce testing as system overwhelmed by outbreak – Asymptomatic people won’t be checked; Israeli HMOs warn they’ll start ‘throwing away’ virus tests due to overload]  but now the reported number of “severe” illnesses has more than doubled since then.  And that is explained here:

Israel’s recent rise in serious COVID-19 cases partly due to change in criteria – Doctors at Israel’s largest hospital amended their approach to categorizing virus patients, impacting national stats; goal is to standardize criteria, they say, not inflate figures.

However, that’s exactly what happened.  Despite the seeming worsening of the pandemic in Israel in a so-called “second wave,” the mortality rate remains relatively low.  But even those numbers can’t be taken at face value as the Israeli media is reporting 375 deaths as a result of COVID-19 as of today’s date, while the WHO makes it 364.

Whom do we believe?  There is no way to know how the dead are being counted as many countries have admitted to decisions and practices which skews those numbers as well.  Either way, the figure remains relatively low.  Even taking the higher figure of 375, that averages out to 2.5 persons per day (since Feb 21 when counts began).

By comparison, in 2016, the most recent date I can find for statistics, there were a total of 35,717 deaths from all causes in the over-65 age group (those determined to be most at risk from COVID-19).That’s an average of 97.8 persons per day.

The reason our perception of this pandemic is so out of touch with reality is because at no other time have the media and the government ever reported on daily deaths from any other cause.  I also have to wonder why the number of ventilated patients is still rising when ventilator-assisted breathing has been determined by many credible medical sources to be a cause of higher mortality.  (See Are Ventilators Making Some COVID-19 Patients Worse? and Why Ventilators May Not Be Working as Well for COVID-19 Patients as Doctors Hoped.)

This was shared today on Facebook.  It is genius.

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From Tomer Devorah, here.