Vizhnitz bans single young men from weddings

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/316076

 Single young men from the Vizhnitz hasidic sect may no longer participate in community weddings, their rebbe (hasidic leader) said, according to Kikar Hashabbat.

According to Kikar Hashabbat, the instruction follows a speech by the Vizhnitzer Rebbe on Shabbat (Saturday), in which he said that, "Everyone is familiar with the history of Vizhnitz over the past seventy years, when during the time that the Vizhnitz neighborhood was built in Bnei Brak, a situation was created in which everyone knew everyone else, and therefore everyone participated in the weddings as one family."

He also said that when his father, the "Yeshuot Moshe," Rabbi Moshe Yehoshua Hager, became rebbe, he instructed that single young men not participate in weddings, since there are enough people who come to make the couple happy.

Pandemic restrictions were a blow to religious liberty - more nonsense!

 https://nypost.com/2021/10/30/pandemic-shutdowns-were-a-blow-to-religious-liberty/

I find that pandemic restrictions significantly reduced religious peoples’ well-being. These effects persisted even after controlling for a wide array of demographic features, such as age and education, and other characteristics, such as income and industry. For example, the restrictions led to a 4.1 percentage point rise in self-isolation among the religious, relative to their counterparts. And they reduced life satisfaction by 0.09 standard deviations, an effect nearly twice as large as the male-female difference in the same measure. 

Accused left-wing Capitol activist John Sullivan facing new charges

 https://www.foxnews.com/us/utah-left-wing-capitol-activist-john-sullivan-will-not-be-detained-pending-trial

 John Earle Sullivan, the left-wing activist who was charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot in Washington, is facing three additional charges, according to reports on Monday.

An ‘Apolitical’ Rabble-Rouser Is at the Center of a Right-Wing Campaign to Blame the Capitol Riot on the Left

https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/john-sullivan-capitol-riot/ 

 ‪Prominent Trump supporters, including the President’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, have seized on Sullivan’s prior involvement in protests for racial justice to claim that “antifa” and left-wing groups infiltrated and steered an otherwise peaceful protest toward violence. (The FBI has said there is “no indication” that antifa took part in the U.S. Capitol riot.)

“A known antifa member” dressed as a Donald Trump supporter “and caused the Capitol riot” on Jan. 6.

 https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jul/30/viral-image/no-proof-man-who-filmed-capitol-riot-led-it-or-was/

• Activist John Earle Sullivan, who has often posed as a journalist to record protests, joined supporters of Donald Trump in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and is charged with crimes for his participation. 

• Sullivan extensively recorded the riot and he can be heard in his footage cheering on the violent acts as he followed rioters through the Capitol.

  We found no evidence that he is a member of antifa, or that he caused the riot.
  

Fact check: Misleading claim about 'antifa member' at Jan. 6 Capitol riot

 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/07/29/fact-check-john-sullivan-not-antifa-member-jan-6-capitol-riot/5405679001/

 The claim: A "known antifa member" was paid $70,000 for his video of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot

Court documents show news outlets paid about the listed amount – $90,000 actually – to use Sullivan's footage, which captured the shooting death of protester Ashli Babbitt. But Sullivan is not a "known antifa member" – and antifa activists weren't behind the Capitol insurrection, as the post makes it seem.

Yamina drops to zero seats in latest poll

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/316052 

Latest poll shows the Likud with wide lead - but still short of a clear path to a 61-seat majority government.

Agunah Allowed To Remarry Without Get, Über Haredi Rabbis Lash Out

 https://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2015/11/agunah-allowed-to-remarry-without-get-%C3%BCber-haredi-rabbis-lash-out-234.html

But many of the more normative haredi rabbis, especially those living in Israel, are reticent to directly challenge Sternbuch and Edah Haredit’s top rabbi, Moshe Yitzchok Tuvia Weiss, for butting into their business, in large part because Edah Haredit followers are notoriously violent and neither of Edah Haredit’s two top rabbis – especially Weiss – has done much to limit that bad behavior, and Weiss is even thought to encourage it.

Supreme Court declines to block Maine vaccine mandate

 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/29/supreme-court-maine-vaccine-mandate-block-517746

  Dozens of health care workers have opted to quit, and a hospital in Maine’s second-largest city already curtailed some admissions because of an “acute shortage” of nurses.

But most health workers have complied, and Maine residents in general have been supportive of the vaccine. The Maine Hospital Association and other health care groups support the requirement.

Dutch Reform rabbi says COVID-19 policies remind her of Nazi Germany

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/dutch-reform-rabbi-says-covid-19-policies-remind-her-of-nazi-germany/

 Those involved in enforcing COVID-19 public health measures “have the best intentions,” Benima added. “But as a Jew, what happened in Nazi Germany is a warning to me. Those in power all had the best of intentions. Also when they declared Jews a danger to ‘public health.’ Also when they declared a war against the ‘virus’ of those times. So don’t play with fire by setting aside people in our society as ‘a danger to public health,’ as Health Minister Hugo De Jonge regularly does.”

Shaked apologizes to Gantz over leaked recordings

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/315986

 In the recordings of Shaked, published on Channel 12 News this week, she was heard criticizing Alternate Prime Minister, Yair Lapid, and saying that "Lapid is a superficial person - every week he carries out an attack and Naftali rescues [him], and no one knows [about it].

Democratic lawmakers ask Biden to stop Jerusalem consulate move

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/316013

So far, efforts to prevent the consulate from opening have only been on the Republican side. Last week, 35 senators from the rival party initiated a law to ban the administration from opening a consulate in Jerusalem. Their attempt to recruit Democrats to support the law have failed. This will be the first time senior members of the president's party have spoken out against the opening of the consulate.

 

Latest Fact-checks of Tucker Carlson

 https://www.politifact.com/personalities/tucker-carlson/

 "In Texas, the power companies have automatically raised the temperature of people's thermostats in the middle of a heatwave without their permission."

Tucker Carlson Goes Full 1/6 Truther in New Fox Doc

 https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/tucker-carlson-january-6-truthe

Tucker Carlson faced widespread condemnation from media figures, Republican lawmakers, and even one of his own Fox News colleagues after airing a trailer for his upcoming project that seemingly portrays the January 6 Capitol riot as a “false flag” operation orchestrated by the government. The promo for Carlson’s documentary series, titled Patriot Purge and airing next week on the Fox Nation streaming service, features one voice suggesting the U.S. government is waging a “domestic war on terror” against “half of the country.”

The trailer, which opens with onscreen text that reads, “The true story behind 1/6” and “The War on Terror 2.0 and the plot against the people,” includes interviews with a man who claims “the left is hunting the right” and “sticking [American citizens] in Guantanamo Bay…leaving them there to rot.” Later in the promo, a woman asserts that “false flags have happened in this country. One of which may have been January 6.” A man is then shown firing a rifle at a shooting range as a narrator states “We are dealing with an insurgency in the United States," before the ad cuts to Joe Biden giving a speech in which he describes white supremacy as “the most lethal threat” in America.