First Amendment Activist is in Danger. Lakewood is a War Zone. Litvaks Attack Hassidim? A Load of Nonsense…

When Harming Another Becomes An Indoctrinated Acceptable Practice, Religious Belief Has Little Value

Published 5.13.21 10:33 am, edited 5.16.21 6:07pm

Dear Readers:

Before we begin, we had contemplated whiting out the faces of the children in the photos below. But they are published and we decided we would follow the lead of the publication. The children and parents, it would seem, take such pride in their behavior.

The story is not about the “Litvaks versus the Hasidim. That is a load of “Chara” put out as poor excuse to enshroud deeply violent behavior. The violence is against one family, that of First Amendment Activist. It is intended to shut him up. And, in our view, there is little difference between indoctrinating your children to violently terrorize a family or strapping a bomb to their waists and telling them to explode it where it can cause the most damage – all for a cause – religion.

We have relied on facts presented by First Amendment Activist, a fellow blogger and journalist looking out for the well-being of his friends, family and Jewish brethren in Lakewood, Toms River and Ocean County, New Jersey. A fact-check of FAA’s material is nothing if not accurate. Scary thing for a community that wants to keep its dirty laundry out of plain sight.

EVERYONE, bar none, should be thankful for his advocacy in New Jersey. What the protesters are doing is not a “great goal” as stated by a Rebbitzin in the article below. These children, encouraged by their parents, are treacherous savages trying to silence a blogger and activist.

First Amendment Activist is a deeply religious person, with a steady ethical and moral set of views and standards grounded in a belief in G-d, family and country. He should be declared a hero in his community. Instead, he is now being treated as a Pariah. Sadly, the hierarchy of police, government, the mayor, the governing bodies are doing nothing to assist him as he gets his house “egged” on a daily basis, as he gets ostracized and as his family gets threatened with violence. All in the name of G-d? No. All in the name of covering up crimes committed in the name of G-d. That is nothing if not G-dless.

The responsible parties of these children who find pleasure in violence, are parents who have taught their children that this behavior is okay, acceptable, if not encouraged. Religious, allegedly devout parents are teaching their children that violence is to be rewarded. The JNews which published this story has it all wrong. The “Litvaks versus the Hassidim” story is not the reason for these young thugs to behave as they are behaving.

Yes. The Litvaks and the Hassidim in Ocean County, generally and Lakewood, particularly, are not allied. They are engaged in their own version of a holy war. But the reality of the story has little to do with that battle. The story should have been focused on the utter savagery being imparted upon one family. It is covered under a shroud of this holy war. And that is a lie.

To the parents of the children pictured in the below, public clips, you should be ashamed of yourselves, teaching your children that “egging” houses, that calling someone a “moser” is okay. The children are dressed as G-d faring disciples. Sadly, the children suffer the sins of the parents and they are nothing, if not thugs and hoodlums bullying and endorsing violence.

A Little Resentment as Secular Israel Quarantines and Religious Israel Gathers by the Thousands – Covid-19

“Massive Wedding Now in Jerusalem”

“To See and Not to Believe”

The above was a live video feed of a funeral in Israel from this afternoon, January 31, 2021 – in the middle of a pandemic. It was taken from a Facebook page, the link for which was sent to us.

There were more than 10,000 in attendance at this funeral. The government will not stop these events from happening because of the coalition Knesset and the power of the few ultra-religious ministers who hold the government hostage. The law enforcement will not step in because of the violence that ensues when when they try to prevent these events from happening.

This is an example of utter lawlessness.

In our opinion, these are large scale bio-terrorist events and should be treated as such. The leaders should be jailed. The people in attendance should be placed in a single location for two weeks so they cannot affect those people who have spent nearly a year abiding by the rules and were NOT in attendance. Medical attention should be denied to anyone who attended. There are law-abiding citizens who may need those beds.

This is wholly godless behavior. Doubtless more funerals will follow as others get sick, hospitalized and die. The end result is inevitable. The optics are terrible.

If there is Anti-Semitism, it is in this instance based upon a resentment and fear derived from actual and frightening events. This is nothing short of murderous conduct committed by a group of fundamentalist fanatics and endorsed by Israel’s government. Those in power in Israel have blood on their hands. There will be more.

To those religious and secular leaders who find this behavior reprehensible, we plead with you to step up and say something. We implore you to demand accountability. We ask that you protect the rest of us.

Vaccinating the Gay Away, ummm.. Huh? Part II, Notes on the Video and More Dangerous Conspiracy Theories

Published with the Permission of the Author

WRITTEN BY WARREN BURSTEIN AND FOUND ON HIS FACEBOOK PAGE

This is going to be long. It’s a review of the video behind this article https://www.israelhayom.com/…/popular-rabbi-warns-follower…/ (Popular rabbi warns followers COVID vaccine ‘could make you gay’). I’m not going to link to the video, but if you want to watch it for yourself, search on YouTube for הרב דניאל עשור and find the video he posted on Jan 10. It’s all in Hebrew, so if your Hebrew isn’t good or nonexistent, read on.

If you only want to hear about the claim that the vaccine makes people gay, skip to the paragraph that starts with “15:50”

The video is 42 minutes long, throughout all you see is a still of the speaker and the title of the video, over a background of a blackboard full of equations and diagrams that keeps zooming in and repeating. Most of it is hidden by the still images, but I was able to see the equation for zero point energy, and velocity of an object in a gravitational field as a function of distance fallen. This is the only video on his channel with this (at least in the thumbnail), so it may have been chosen to give the impression that this video contains some science, but those two equations have nothing to do with the COVID-19 vaccine.

00:55 There’s no plague, there might be a disease

01:00 The number of people vaccinated in Israel is “Aravushi” propaganda, like during wartime. The word in quotes is a Hebrew derogatory word for Arabs. It’s a a diminutive, and usually is positive (for example, you might call a child, lover, or close friend “Danielush”) but this is an exception. See here (in Hebrew) https://he.wikipedia.org/…/%D7%9B%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%99_%…

02:10 Jews are being used as test subjects (this is somewhat true, Israel is collecting data for Pfizer, but Israel isn’t the only country currently administering the vaccine. I don’t think Great Britain is experimenting on Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip, now if they gave it to Charles, but I digress) and this is reminiscent of medical experimentation during the Holocaust. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law)

02:25 He explains how the vaccine works, mRNA doesn’t change DNA so there’s no cause for concern, it makes proteins in ribosomes which stimulates the immune system, and he at least gives a good explanation of what he disagrees with, conspiracy theorists very often do not do that.

05:00 A Professor Alon Sadeh claims that if it didn’t change DNA, immunity wouldn’t last. This is wrong, because the immune system doesn’t require continuous production of the spike protein, it has memory. I found Sadeh’s article about the vaccine (https://drive.google.com/…/15flcRcrqY3l1m2ettOXoOuJgvG…/view), and after the amount of time it took to watch the video I don’t feel like reading six pages in Hebrew so I’m only responding to Asor’s summary of what Sadeh said. However he doesn’t seem to be a professor, he’s been a researcher at universities in the past, but he only has a Masters degree and currently teaches at an elementary school in Rechovot (https://shuvu-rehovot.tik-tak.net/%D7%90%D7%95%D7%93%D7%95…/)

06:50 The vaccine is intended to change DNA. Mentions Yuval Harari who has written about changing human DNA, but has not, as far as I can tell, said that the vaccine is an instance of that.

08:46 Goes back to Alon Sadeh and (unnamed) others who think the vaccine is designed to alter DNA

09:23 Raises the possibility that the immune system would attack cells that are making spike proteins. I haven’t found an article dealing with this, but the vaccine went into Stage 1 tests in August and mRNA vaccines have been in veterinary use for longer.

14:00 There is a protein in the human placenta similar to the spike protein so this could prevent pregnancies and repeats the misinterpretation of Bill Gates’ claim that vaccination would reduce overpopulation (but it’s not by killing people, it’s by parents not having large families so at least some children survive). There have been woman who got pregnant after receiving the vaccine in Phase 3 trials, the only pregnancy loss was in the placebo group (https://hartfordhealthcare.org/abou…/news-press/news-detail…)

15:50 The vaccine contains fetal tissues, and this is known to cause “inverted tendencies” (religious Hebrew for homosexuality) but he gives no evidence.. In fact, while Pfizer and Moderna tested the vaccines on fetal cell lines, there are no fetal cells in the vaccine (https://www.nebraskamed.com/…/you-asked-we-answered-do-the-…)

16:37 Either Bill Gates or someone from Pfizer who resembles him somewhat gave a speech, which is on the net, but he doesn’t say where, about how religious fundamentalist extremists have an unnamed hormone in their brain, and speculates that if a vaccine could be made to neutralize it, religious fundamentalist extremism could be eliminated. He confuses religious fundamentalist extremism with all religion, but that may not be an accident … In any case, there’s no evidence that this vaccine would have that effect.

18:20 While the vaccine does not contain chips, it does contain an unnamed nanotechnology ingredient. In fact, it’s a nanoparticle lipid which helps the mRNA get to where it needs to (https://www.reuters.com/…/fact-check-lipid-nanoparticles-in…)

The rest of the video is religious arguments and repetitions of earlier claims that I’ll skip, the only point I want to highlight is that at 36:25 he refers to the belief, common among religious Jewish conspiracy-messianic-theorists, that before the coming of the Messiah, the “erev rav” will rule the land of Israel. The phrase is found in Exodus 12:38 and is understood to refer to non-Hebrew people who joined in the Exodus from Egypt, and classical rabbinic sources blame them for problems such as the sin of Golden Calf. In mystical sources they are said to be reincarnated and cause problems of Jews in later generations. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erev_Rav), and in contemporary discussions is used rather the same way as the phrase “Jews in Name Only”. It sometimes turns up in discussions around Yitzchak Rabin’s assassination, but in this video the implication is that the current Prime Minister is no better.

Apples and Trees, Kings County, Q-Anon FBI Arrests, DC Coup, Radical Fundamentalism…

Orthodox Jews waving Trump flags in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, October 7, 2020.Credit: YUKI IWAMURA/ REUTERS

How Far Will We Go In Our Support of…

Dear Readers:

This is being written in direct response to calls to publish more about the arrests in Washington, DC, particularly as they relate to the Jewish community and the arrest of a resident of Kings County. For a host of reasons I decided to stay away from the topic; but its absence on these pages has raised as many questions as it has avoided. I will begin by stating that I have shied away from this topic because, on the one hand, if there is one thing I have come to adopt in the last few years it is a firm belief that the system of electing judges and politicians in Kings County, NY is entirely corrupt. The law firms who are on the committees to elect judges, who control the slate, and who are in positions within the power structure in Kings County are in direct conflict of interest with the public’s right to judicial integrity. As such, both the attorneys and their hand-picked elected judges and politicians are ripe for manipulation and all is lost for a fair playing field for anyone on the other side of the kingmakers. I posit that only a judge who is independent can possibly be impartial. And it is my belief that absolute power corrupts absolutely. On the other hand, and taking a consistent view on fairness, reporting the subject of those arrested should also be fair. And, I do not believe it has been.

If I am honest, my feelings about Kings County politics, both judicial and governmental have tempered my approach to anything related to that subject. However, my position as a parent, an idealist and someone who believes that we should be more charitable and kind and that sites like mine should have integrity provides guidance on how I will treat the arrest of a Kings County native, something that will be clear as you continue reading.

Before you read further, be warned. I was not a fan of Trumpism. But, that was more about his brash, childish, vindictive, narcissistic and self-serving traits as a human being. Old-school Republicanism is something I go back and forth on. The office of President in all of its old school formalities are requirements to which I ascribe whomever holds that position. We spent years building up our government; and the office of President should be dignified regardless of the affiliation of the politician who sits there. Even Nixon respected the office and wanted to leave with dignity. Trump, not so much. And Trumpism, the embodiment of the man and his politics, is a frightening window into extremism American style. The following editorial will reflect this view. If you are a forever Trumper, my comments after the first few paragraphs will not be for you. Let’s agree to disagree.

I will start with this: HOW THE DC ARRESTS ARE BEING REPORTED AND SIGNIFICANT BIASES

The arrests of the people in Washington, DC for the role they played in the coup d’etat has highlighted famous figures, likely because it seems so shocking. I premise later some thoughts on that. For now, all of the arrests should be about the individuals, not their families. Some of those arrested are police officers, some governmental figures, GOP lawmakers, some military figures, some violent, some less so, and some Olympic athletes. They were each, in my view, a victim of ideological, neo-Fascist indoctrination with few exceptions. They were following what I firmly believe to have been a false narrative: “Stop the Steal.” That narrative has been a recurring theme through Trump’s entire Presidency, one that attributes his failures to things “stolen from him.” Each person that attended that rally but crossed the line of violence and organized coup is individually accountable for his or her actions. But collectively their leaders, whether governmental, social or religious are no less culpable.

The media coverage of each arrest has focused on the name of the person, not who that person’s parents are, with extremely rare exception. In New York the high profile arrest of a 34-year-old son of a Kings County Practicing Orthodox Jewish judge is one such exception and an unfair stain on the father for the actions of the son. The subject’s father is a registered Democrat and his brother is the executive director of Chovevei Zion, a politically conservative Orthodox advocacy organization as well as a Brooklyn district leader and vice president of the South Brooklyn Conservative club. Clearly there is a difference of opinion on politics within that family. Sitting at the Passover Seder must be an interesting, if not potentially volatile experience. Both of the sons are adults. They both can think for themselves. What happens next is up to the family; but unless the arrested man’s father convinced him to take an active stand in DC, a potentially violent stand, his father should be given his privacy and not made the focus of news articles or media attention.

Vaccinate the Gay Away…. Huh? Rabbi Daniel Asor and His Dangerous Assertions…

If Vaccinations Cause Homosexuality, Can they Then Cure It?

There are no words to describe the the following article which almost feels like it should be satirical, if it were not such a serious and perilous approach to both vaccinations and homosexuality. Rabbi David Asor, who has tens of thousands of followers has told his followers that vaccinating against Covid-19 using a vaccination that has an embryonic substrate could cause homosexuality. It is important to note that leading religious leaders have supported vaccinating their communities. But Asor’s positions are dangerous.

Fervently religious observers of all faiths, sports fans, rioters and many protestors have put their followers, fans and fellow supporters at great risk. They have spread that risk to innocents, civilians with whom they come into contact following their acts of Constitutionally protected speech and assembly. Thousands and thousands have died or been sickened, some losing their livelihoods, some losing their homes, some spending months in and out of autoimmune flare-ups, not because they made a choice to be a proverbial conscientious objector. How Constitutional freedoms even have a place in a world that has been wholly upended due to Covid-19 remains a point of scholarly debate – but that’s an article for another day.

It may be that the only path to normalcy is vaccination, a point many religious leaders have acknowledged. But Azor is afraid of injecting a homosexuality gene? Huh?

Rabbi David Azor believes – and has preached his gospel – that Covid-19 was spread to cull the population, that Bill Gates is “trying to establish a new world order,” that a number of US governmental organizations are trying to create a “brutal arm” and that the vaccinations against Covid-19 can cause homosexuality. Let’s just say for a second that all of those assertions are correct. Ask yourself to define “organized and zealous” religious practice. Is it not similarly a way of controlling fellow followers, creating a religious world order? All organized religion, protest, cronyism, following is a form of control – whether it is control of religious belief and activity, methodology in protest, cronyism to political parties – it is all about control and some sort of vast organizing of the controlling body versus the controlled populous.

While many would disagree, sexual orientation and preference is not a choice. It is as much a part of a person’s being as their DNA. And it should be embraced like blue eyes, red hair, height and everything else there is about a person. We don’t need to love it or even approve of it, but acceptance and tolerance should come without question, it should be part of this “world order” to which Asor ascribes. To assume homosexuality can be “cured” by prayer, conversion therapy or some other form of demeaning and dehumanizing practice is to engage in abuse. Full stop. To assume that it can be spread or somehow injected is an absurdity.

But, let’s assume for a second that Asor is correct, that a virus based in human embryonic substrate can somehow cause homosexuality – only for the purposes of academic argument, we ask Rabbi Daniel Asor if the converse is also true.

If vaccinations can cause homosexuality then is the converse also true? Can vaccinations then cure homosexuality? Certainly it must work both ways?

Israel has vaccinated 1.8 million people in record time | Illustration: Reuters/Dado Ruvic

Popular rabbi warns followers COVID vaccine ‘could make you gay’

In addition to purporting a false link between vaccines and homosexuality, Rabbi Daniel Asor also claims that both the virus and the vaccines are the work of a “global malicious government” trying to “establish a new world order.”

Rabbi Daniel Asor’s assertion goes against decrees issued by leading rabbis in Israel and around the world, who have called on ultra-Orthodox society to take every precaution against the global pandemic, including getting vaccinated.

The Haredi community has recorded extremely high morbidity rates due to repeated flouting of social distancing directives.

Asor, who has tens of thousands of followers on social media, is no stranger to controversy. In his latest online sermons, he argued that “any vaccine made using an embryonic substrate, and we have evidence of this, causes opposite tendencies. Vaccines are taken from an embryonic substrate, and they did that here, too, so … it can cause opposite tendencies.”

In addition to purporting a false link between vaccines and homosexuality, Assur also advocates various conspiracy theories about the coronavirus, claiming, among other things, that both the virus and the vaccines are the work of a “global malicious government,” comprising the Freemasons, the Illuminati, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and others, who are “trying to establish a new world order.”

He further argues that the virus was released to “cull global population” and that the vaccines seek to further this agenda.

Asor calls the World Health Organization and pharma giants Pfizer and Moderna “criminal organizations” that have deliberately mislead ultra-Orthodox leaders into supporting vaccination drives by presenting them with false data on its components and efficiency.

Further spinning his conspiracy theory, Asor claims that the US Federal Emergency Management Agency, a Department of Homeland Security that has joined forces with Israel’s National Emergency Authority to battle the pandemic, maintains a “brutal army” in Israel that will be secretly embedded with local law enforcement to further the global government’s nefarious agenda.

It should be stressed that leading rabbis in the Sephardi and Ashkenazi comminutes have deemed COVID-19 vaccines to be safe and are urging their followers to be immunized.

To continue reading, click here.

The Crisis of Authority in Haredi Ranks and the Void Left Behind – Covid-19

ORTHODOX JEWS IN BROOKLYN ON APRIL 29, 2020. SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES.

American Orthodoxy’s Twilight of Authority

When the established rabbis go silent, others, including civic-minded philanthropists and charismatic outsiders with inflammatory social-media presences, fill the void.

The events this autumn in Brooklyn’s ḥaredi (Orthodox) communities have been quite extraordinary, even revelatory. Contrary to popular hope, herd immunity to the coronavirus has not been achieved; the city government’s response to the new second wave has been heavy-handed and possibly discriminatory; and in turn its legitimate attempts to enforce closures, social distancing, and mask wearing have been spurned rather than obeyed, thanks in part to the emergence of the since-arrested agitator Heshy Tischler as an outspoken voice for what he hopes constitutes the silent majority of the ḥaredi world. That this convict-turned-politician-turned-radio-host-turned-riot-inciter has found significant—though by no means total or even majority—support for his combative message reflects important and overlooked changes in the ḥaredi community in recent years, most notably the appearance of a serious crisis of authority in its ranks. This is most revelatory of all. As America at large is dealing with the hollowing out of institutions and the rise of politicians with inflammatory social-media presence, the ḥaredi world is too, even if the institutions are rabbinic and the social-media platform is more likely to be WhatsApp than Twitter.

Ḥaredi attitudes toward leadership have long differed from those of their surrounding communities, Jewish or gentile. Much of the community subscribes to a theology of Daas Torah (“knowledge of Torah”), whereby leading rabbis—those with the greatest degree of Torah knowledge and therefore the greatest degree of insight into the divine mind—are empowered to make all major communal decisions. We see this approach very much in effect today in Israel, where the two senior rabbinic authorities—Rabbi Gershon Edelstein and Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky—are engaged in political negotiations through the ḥaredi parties, in determining when to reopen yeshivas, and simultaneously in messaging to their communities on how to proceed. The two rabbis having often been at odds with each other in recent months notwithstanding, the fact remains that the prevailing ideology of Daas Torah dictates that these rabbis (and their courts and handlers) make policy on nearly every issue for their ḥaredi followers. In America, a similar rabbinic seat of authority rests with the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah, the council of great rabbinic sages, which is affiliated with the Agudath Israel of America. (The organization lost its leader, Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, “the Novominsker rebbe,” to COVID-19 in April, added several members in September, in a move towards relative youth, and lost Rabbi Dovid Feinstein, one of its elder statesmen, just two weeks ago.)

For as long as there have been rabbis, those possessing expertise in Torah knowledge have been consulted on issues large and small in their areas of training—Talmud and halakhah (Jewish law). Daas Torah goes well beyond that, into a presumption that their training in Torah qualifies leading rabbis as experts to be consulted on all worldly issues. There is some controversy as to when exactly the approach took hold. Lawrence Kaplan and Jacob Katz, two historians of Jewish law, have argued that this is an innovation of the modern period, possibly stemming from the 18th-century revolution of Ḥasidism. Others, like the rabbi Alfred Cohen, have argued for roots in the pre-modern period.

To continue reading in Mosaic, click here.

Dr. Rich Roberts The Coronavirus Carnival in Lakewood – Governor Murphy Where Are You? Lock-Down?

New Jersey is on Lock-Down (as it should be) but Dr. Rich Roberts Will be Handing Out Candy to Cars Lined Up…. This is Nuts