The U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment doesn’t only prohibit government from preventing what we choose to say; it also prohibits its forcing a citizen to say what he doesn’t want to say. And a case that will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in the fall — one with repercussions for some businesses in the Orthodox Jewish community — revolves around that concept.
To read about the case and the concept, please click here:
A pandemic of pilferage predates the virus one, though the reason isn’t clear. My thought on the matter is here.
| An accomplished doctor recently told the world that she is rethinking her assumptions about advanced care directives, since, while “it is easy for people to say that they would rather die than live with significant limitations,” over time they “evolve in ways they cannot expect.” To read more, please click here . |
“Is anyone there? Can you hear me?” You shout at the rubble of a collapsed building. No reply, but then… was that tapping?
You have an idea. “If you can understand me,” you yell, “tap once.” A single tap. “If you’re injured,” you then say, “tap twice.” Two taps. There’s someone there.
An apt metaphor for something very important. To read what, please click here.
Just when it seemed the news stream couldn’t get nuttier, we were graced with the lovely story, first reported by The Washington Post, of third-graders at a Washington, DC, elementary school allegedly told to reenact horrific Holocaust scenes. To read more about that “creative” assignment, click here,
I’m not in the habit of writing non-Jewish holiday-season pieces but did so recently. My essay appeared in the Washington Post but can be read paywall-free here.
It may have started back in the summer of 2020, when a Kansas Republican county chairman posted a caricature of the state’s Democratic governor Laura Kelly on his newspaper’s Facebook page. Ms. Kelly had issued a public-setting mask mandate, and was depicted wearing a mask with a Magen David on it. In the background was a photograph of European Jews being loaded onto train cars. The caption: “Lockdown Laura says: Put on your mask … and step on to the cattle car.”
The next summer, we were treated to Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s criticism of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s mask requirement for the chamber, in which Ms. Taylor Greene declared: “You know, we can look back at a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star… were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany. And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.” Under pressure from her peers, the congresswoman later apologized; but her point, such as it was, had been made, and likely energized her like-minded supporters.
Then came Oklahoma GOP chairman John Bennett’s comparison of private companies requiring employees to get vaccines to — three guesses — the Nazis’ forcing Jews to wear a yellow star.
The odious comparisons just seemed to pile up, across the country. They were getting attention, after all, and attention is catnip for political felines. Of course, the offensive comments, each in turn, were all roundly condemned by Jewish groups. Wash, rinse and repeat.
Last week, though, may have offered us the Mother Of All Such Slurs, when broadcaster Lara Logan, once a respected CBS News foreign correspondent and now a Fox Nation commentator, appeared on the “Fox News Primetime” program, where she addressed Dr. Anthony Fauci’s recommendation that Americans get fully vaccinated, including booster shots, in the wake of the appearance of the Omicron COVID variant. Her words:
“This is what people say to me, that he doesn’t represent science to them. He represents Joseph Mengele, the Nazi doctor who did experiments on Jews during the Second World War and in the concentration camps. And I am talking about people all across the world are saying this.”
A cursory search turns up no one but Ms. Logan saying such a thing, but maybe those people all across the world spoke with her privately.
As usual, Jewish groups rightly rushed to condemn her statement. But she was impervious to the criticism, later re-tweeting to her 197,000 Twitter followers a Jewish fan’s comment: “Shame on the Auschwitz Museum for shaming Lara Logan for sharing that Jews like me believe Fauci is a modern day Mengele.” Well, that makes two people, anyway.
This introduction shouldn’t be, and probably isn’t, necessary, but for any readers not fully familiar with Josef Mengele, yimach shemo vizichro: He was a Nazi doctor given the title “Todesengel” — German for malach hamaves. At Auschwitz, he performed deadly experiments on prisoners, selected victims to be killed in the gas chambers and helped administer the Zyklon B, or hydrogen cyanide, gas.
Mengele was particularly interested in twins, separating them on their arrival at the concentration camp, and performing experiments on them, including infecting them with germs to give them life-threatening diseases, performing operations on them without anesthetics and killing many of them to compare their and their siblings’ internal organs.
As to Dr. Fauci’s sin, it is being cautious — overly so, to his critics — about public health measures.
Aside from the insult and offensiveness of the Holocaust comparisons, the repeated use of the murder of six million Jews as a political tool should bother us for another reason:
With each one, even dutifully followed by condemnations, the memory of Churban Europa is further dulled a bit, the force of its historical reality subtly blunted. The public mind is, slur by slur, lulled into regarding the Holocaust as a mere metaphor. That may be of no concern to the offenders, but it should be to us.
Because the cascade of casual co-optings of the Holocaust to score political points dovetails grievously with the diminishing number of living links to the events of 1939-1945.
And all the loathsome little Holocaust deniers and revisionists are just licking their lips as they wait in the wings.
© 2021 Ami Magazine
To the Editor:
Judaism permits, even requires, abortion in limited cases, and responsible Jews cannot endorse measures that give a fetus the same protections as a born child.
But, with regard to Sarah Seltzer’s rumination on Judaism’s abortion position, there is nothing whatsoever in the Jewish religious tradition that permits abortion as a mere “choice” to be made for personal, economic or social reasons.
Nothing whatsoever.
(Rabbi) Avi Shafran
New York
The writer is director of public affairs at Agudath Israel of America.
“Critical Race Theory,” which rests on the assumption that racial bias remains hard-wired in our country’s laws, policies and institutions, is dangerous nonsense. But perfectly legitimate topics for discussion and inclusion in school curricula are things that many mistakenly conflate with CRT. Those two points comprised the topic of my Ami column last week, which is at https://www.amimagazine.org/2021/10/27/critical-race-leery/
When parents of young people seek proper husbands or wives for their sons or daughters (or when the young people do the seeking themselves), one or more of a number of factors are usually considered. For some people, the “quality” of the family of the prospective mate is paramount. For others, his or her yichus, or ancestry, plays a major role.
Others, still, look for someone of financial means, if only to ensure that the potential couple won’t be overly pressured by legitimate economic needs.
At the beginning of Klal Yisrael’s development, we find Eliezer, the servant of Avraham Avinu, tasked with finding a proper life partner for Yitzchak. Eliezer was a wise and accomplished man, someone who was not only wholly dedicated to Avraham but who (as per a drasha based on the adjective “damesek” used before Eliezer’s name [Braishis 15:2]) “would draw up and teach” (“doleh umashkeh”) all that he had learned from Avraham to others (Yoma, 28b). He is described by Chazal as “an elder who sat [and studied] in yeshiva” (ibid).
In fact, were it not for the fact that, at the start of Klal Yisrael, a Cna’anis would be unfit to be one of the Imahos, Eliezer’s own daughter would have fit the bill.
So, at least at that point in history, at least general yichus mattered. As did family, since Avraham asked Eliezer to look for Yitzchak’s shidduch among his kinfolk.
But we don’t find Avraham offering his servant any further guidance about how to find the right person. Avraham, it seems, knowing Eliezer’s high level of wisdom and character, relied entirely on his faithful servant’s judgment.
And what Eliezer clearly sought out in a mate for Yitzchak, as per his prayer that he be guided to a young woman who will gladly give him and his camels water (Beraishis 24:14), was a person exemplifying chesed — kindness.
Beyond all other priorities, whether worthy or less so, what most matters when it comes to shidduchim, is the character of the potential life partner.
All else, even if it may seem important, is secondary.
© 2021 Rabbi Avi Shafran