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הרב ברנד בענין ממזרות בהזרעה מלאכותית

בענין הזרעה מלאכותית לאשת איש אם הולד ממזר

האם ממזר תלוי בביאת איסור, או בחיבור שאין קידושין תופסים בו ● דיני ממזר באשת איש נקבעו בשעת ההזרעה, ולא בשעת חיבור הביצית עם הזרע ● בענין ביצית של אשת איש לאשה אחרת ● יש מצבים שאדם בא על חייבי כריתות והולד לא ממזר ● השגה על מה שכתבנו

המשך לקרוא…

מאתר בריתי יצחק – הרב ברנד, כאן.

Ron Paul: Yes, Health Freedom Includes Vaccines

Vaccine Controversy Shows Why We Need Markets, Not Mandates

written by Ron Paul Sunday, February 8, 2015
If I were still a practicing ob-gyn and one of my patients said she was not going to vaccinate her child, I might try to persuade her to change her mind. But, if I were unsuccessful, I would respect her decision. I certainly would not lobby the government to pass a law mandating that children be vaccinated even if the children’s parents object. Sadly, the recent panic over the outbreak of measles has led many Americans, including some self-styled libertarians, to call for giving government new powers to force all children to be vaccinated.Those who are willing to make an “exception” to the principle that parents should make health care decisions for their children should ask themselves when in history has a “limited” infringement on individual liberty stayed limited. By ceding the principle that individuals have the right to make their own health care decisions, supporters of mandatory vaccines are opening the door for future infringements on health freedom.If government can mandate that children receive vaccines, then why shouldn’t the government mandate that adults receive certain types of vaccines? And if it is the law that individuals must be vaccinated, then why shouldn’t police officers be empowered to physically force resisters to receive a vaccine? If the fear of infections from the unvaccinated justifies mandatory vaccine laws, then why shouldn’t police offices fine or arrest people who don’t wash their hands or cover their noses or mouths when they cough or sneeze in public? Why not force people to eat right and take vitamins in order to lower their risk of contracting an infectious disease? These proposals may seem outlandish, but they are no different in principle from the proposal that government force children to be vaccinated.

By giving vaccine companies a captive market, mandates encourage these companies to use their political influence to expand the amount of vaccine mandates. An example of how vaccine mandates may have led politics to override sound science is from my home state of Texas. In 2007, the then-Texas governor signed an executive order forcing eleven and twelve year old girls to receive the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine, even though most young girls are not at risk of HPV. The Texas legislature passed legislation undoing the order following a massive public outcry, fueled by revelations that the governor’s former chief of staff was a top lobbyist for the company that manufactured the HPV vaccine.

The same principles that protect the right to refuse vaccines also protect the right of individuals to refuse to associate with the unvaccinated. Private property owners have the right to forbid those who reject vaccines from entering their property. This right extends to private businesses concerned that unvaccinated individuals could pose a risk to their employees and customers. Consistent application of the principles of private property, freedom of association, and individual responsibility is the best way to address concerns that those who refuse vaccines could infect others with disease.

Giving the government the power to override parental decisions regarding vaccines will inevitably lead to further restrictions on liberties. After all, if government can override parental or personal health care decisions, then what area of our lives is off-limits to government interference? Concerns about infection from the unvaccinated can be addressed by consistent application of the principles of private property and freedom of association. Instead of justifying new government intrusion into our lives, the vaccine debate provides more evidence of the need to restore respect for private property and individual liberty.

From The Ron Paul Institute, here.

Jewish Action Magazine Interviews on Studying Tanach

Mining Tanach

Professor Nechama Leibowitz was perhaps the pivotal figure in a Tanach revolution that began a century ago and continues to this day. Many of the early secular Zionists promoted Tanach study as a counterpart to their efforts to settle the Biblical land. Religious Zionists took Tanach study as a doubly sacred venture: Torah study in itself and also as an element of their devotion to the flourishing of the land. Professor Leibowitz, or Nechama as she preferred to be called, spearheaded in her modest way a new approach to studying Tanach. While she was not alone in this effort to reinvigorate and revolutionize the study of Tanach, she personally inspired thousands of students to take a fresh and serious look at the sacred text.

Just like Reb Chaim Brisker’s students adapted his revolutionary approach to Talmud into different new methods of their own, Nechama’s students have developed their own approaches. There is now a wide variety of Religious Zionist methodologies of Tanach study—some emphasize medieval commentaries; others focus on Israeli geography or botany; still others address the psychology of the Biblical characters; and much more. These exciting and different new approaches have yielded vibrant journals, ground-breaking books and heavily attended conferences. Particularly remarkable about this phenomenon is that it is not limited to scholars. While professors and rabbis participate in Tanach conferences, the vast majority of attendees are laypeople—men and women, young and old, across all occupations. Over the past decade or two, this excitement has spilled over into the United States and Israel, where new books, lectures and conferences have attracted increasing numbers of attendees.

In the pages ahead, we include interviews with a sample of prominent Tanach teachers from across the spectrum, in the US and in Israel.

—Rabbi Gil Student

 

Queen of Questions: Nechama Leibowitz by Shira Leibowitz Schmidt

The First and Last Time I Saw Nechama by Shira Leibowitz Schmidt

Up Close with Rabbi David Fohrman by Dovid Bashevkin

A New-Old Approach to the Study of Tanach: Meet Dr. Yael Ziegler by Alex Maged

The Case for a Traditional Approach in the Study of Tanach: Talking with Rabbi Nosson Scherman by Dovid Bashevkin

Tanach for Our Generation: Rabbi Yaakov Ariel on Tanach Study, translation by Gil Student

Why Isn’t Tanach Studied More? by Eliyahu Krakowski

The Limits of Interpretation by Netanel Wiederblank

This article was featured in Jewish Action Winter 2018.

The ‘Nothing’ Option Is Understandably Hard to See

Krugman Assumes One Must Act

Krugman writes:

the opponents of a strong stimulus plan don’t really have an alternative to offer.

Here’s an alternative: nothing. Like when a nervous mom takes her precious 12-month old to the doctor because he has a cold, the best thing the doctor can do is nothing. Maybe a placebo. So too for the economy.

They don’t even have a really coherent critique; as Brad DeLong points out, if you believe that a surge in private spending would raise employment — and even the critics agree on that — it’s very hard to explain why a surge of public spending wouldn’t have the same effect.

The difference between an increase in private investment spending, and government spending, is like the difference between pushing an old lady down and pushing her out of the way of a runaway train. private investment is the result of millions of individuals making decisions based on their wealth and profit expectation; the other is simply someone spending other people’s money to help other people get jobs.

In a complex system, injecting more of an endogenous quantity that is correlated with something good invariably causes feedback effects, most bad, because complex systems tend to be optimized, and so the ‘total derivative’ in futzing with some input is usually negative (though the first partial often highly positive). This is why we do not suggest one take serotonin supplements, even though higher levels of serotonin are correlated with success and high status. Testosterone is known to have many positive qualities for men, but the best ways to generate a higher level of testosterone is to exercise regularly, including weight training, avoid insulin spikes, get your body fat low, and get good sleep. A bad way would be to inject it into your bloodstream. This is because the latter invites your body to decrease the amount it makes, and the net effect is usually negative.

Similarly, taking money away from some people for make-work projects creates jobs, but these are taking away money spent on something else, so the net is often negative. Further, unlike natural demand, the incentives of the workers are not necessarily so good for ‘natural’ jobs we would like them to eventually get.

It’s funny how many economists do not really believe in the Invisible Hand, except for trivial applications.

חנוכה – מעמד הדגמה, תרגול וכיסופים

הזמנה: אירוע מקדשי מרתק ביום השמיני של חנוכה

ביום שני, “זאת חנוכה” • אחרי שהדלקנו בלילה הקודם שמונה נרות • אחרי שעלינו בבוקר להר הבית • מתרגלים את הדלקת הנרות במנורת המקדש ואת חנוכת המזבח • גן הבונים (מחוץ לחומה, בין שער יפו לשער ציון) • 10:30 בבוקר • האירוע מתאים לכל המשפחה

בן למואל יום שישי, כ”ב בכסלו ה’תשע”ט

גן הבונים נמצא מחוץ לחומת העיר העתיקה, מאחורי מגדל דוד.