Friday, April 29, 2022

What the Science Says About the Health Benefits of Vitamins and Supplements

 https://time.com/6171584/are-vitamins-supplements-healthy/

In some cases, supplement use could even be harmful. A 2015 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that there are an estimated 23,000 emergency department visits every year in the U.S. for adverse events related to the use of dietary supplements, many involving cardiovascular issues from weight-loss or energy products. “Particularly when we use very high dose implementations, sometimes we might be doing more harm than good,” says Eliseo Guallar, professor of epidemiology and medicine at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

DeSantis aims at Disney and hits Florida's taxpayers

 https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/desantis-aims-disney-hits-florida-s-taxpayers-n1294756


Those on the right who support these maneuvers are not shy about telling you why they think they’re necessary. These companies enjoy outsize influence over the national discourse. They are imperious and unresponsive to democratic contrivances. They say the right’s refusal to fight fire with fire — especially in deference to abstract principles like the value of limited government and free enterprise — represents unilateral disarmament in an existential cultural struggle.What they don’t say is what these measures are supposed to achieve, especially after the courts invalidate them. If a simple gesture of hostility in the general direction of a particular problem satisfies these right-leaning critics of cultural progressivism, then they are only in the market for theatrics.

Don't throw away your mask just yet: Experts weight in on pros of discarded mandate

 https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science/article/hk285jmsc

At-risk populations include infants, the elderly, pregnant women, and those who have a weakened immune system. Some of them cannot be identified that easily, especially young people with underlying illnesses who appear healthy. You could make them extreme ill and even pose a life threat to them if you're maskless around them - while infected.
At this point, with COVID still around and Health Ministry's infection data being only partial, it is a good idea to continue wearing masks in confined places with large gatherings.

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Strauss expands recall to all products made at factory where salmonella first found

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-april-27-2022/

Food manufacturer calls on Israelis to return range of chocolate items made at facility in northern Israel after confirming presence of bacteria in consumer-ready goods

Health Ministry launches polio vaccination campaign for children, teens

 https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-705152

The Health Ministry has launched a polio vaccination campaign for children across the country ages six weeks to 17 years, the ministry announced at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon.

The announcement comes against the backdrop of a number of polio cases being detected in Israeli children, all of whom were unvaccinated. As of April, at least eight children in Israel have been found to have polio, seven of whom have no symptoms. The poliovirus was detected in sewage samples taken from Jerusalem and the surrounding areas after a four-year-old child exhibited symptoms of the disease in early March.

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

Vienese traditional treatment of independent women

 


Drinking water at night?

 Avoda Zara (12b)  Our Rabbis taught: One should not drink water in the night; if he does drink his blood is on his head, for it is dangerous. What danger is there? The danger of Shabriri. But if he be thirsty, how can he put things right? — If there is another person with him, he should wake him and say: ‘I am a thirst for water’. If not, let him knock with the lid on the jug and say to himself: ‘Thou [giving his name] the son of [naming his mother], thy mother hath warned thee to guard thyself against Shabriri, briri, riri, iri, ri, which prevail in blind vessels.’

Rashi שברירי - שד הממונה על מכת סנוירים. לא גרס הכא לא מן הנהרות ומן האגמים דה"ה נמי מן הכלים:

איזדהר משברירי שברירי ברירי רירי ירי רי בכסי חיורי - לחש הוא ומתמעט והולך משם השד כאשר הוא שומע מיעוט תיבות אות אחר אות עד רי וכן הוא הלחש להבריחו משם. סנוירים תרגומו שברירי (בראשית יט):

Mishneh Torah, (Murderer and the Preservation of Life 11:6)  The rules are: A person must never put his mouth to a pipe spouting water and drink; he must not drink from rivers or ponds at night, for fear that he might swallow a leech without seeing; he must not drink uncovered water, for fear that a snake or any other reptile drank it, and he might die.

Shulchan Arukh (Yoreh De'ah 116:5) One must refrain from putting coins in one's mouth, lest it's covered with dried saliva of those afflicted with boils. He should not put the palm of his hand in his arm pit, lest his hand touched a metzorah or a harmful poison. He should not put a loaf of bread under his armpit, because of the sweat. He should not put a cooked item or drinks under the bed, since an evil spirit rests on them. He should not stick a knife in an esrog or a radish, lest one fall on its edge and die. Hagah: Similarly, he should be careful of all things that cause danger, because danger is stricter than transgressions, and one should be more careful with an uncertain danger than with an uncertain issur. They also prohibited to go in a dangerous place, such as under a leaning wall, or alone at night. They also prohibited to drink water from rivers at night or to put one's mouth on a stream of water and drink, because these matters have a concern of danger. It is the widespread custom not to drink water during the equinox, and the early ones wrote this and it is not to be changed. They also wrote to flee from the city when a plague is in the city, and one should leave at the beginning of the plague and not at the end. And all of these things are because of the danger, and a person who guards his soul will distance himself from them and it is prohibited to rely on a miracle in all of these matters.

Shulchan Arukh (Choshen Mishpat 427:9) The sages prohibited many things because of danger to a person. And some of them are explained in the Tur. Additionally, there are other things and these are they: A person must never put his mouth to a pipe spouting water and drink; he must not drink from rivers or ponds at night, for fear that he might swallow a leech without seeing. Rama: I have already written these in Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh De'ah 116:5

Cleveland rabbi arrested for soliciting an investigator who posed as an underage boy online

 https://forward.com/news/500182/cleveland-rabbi-stephen-weiss-arrested-soliciting-minor/

The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the movement with which Weiss and B’nai Jeshurun are affiliated, launched an investigation into sexual harassment in its youth program last August after the Times of Israel reported three people came forward with claims against a former counselor with the program, known as United Synagogue Youth. The Union for Reform Judaism released the findings of a similar investigation in February, finding alarming incidents of sexual harassment at several of its summer camps.


Chocolate leaves stores as Strauss reports salmonella contamination

 https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-705019

In a public announcement on Monday morning, the company stated that “a number of samples containing salmonella were discovered in the factory’s production line and in the chocolate used as a raw material to create products,” adding that the food service department at the Health Ministry was immediately notified.

As a precautionary measure and out of a concern regarding the integrity of the products, Strauss has decided, in cooperation with the Health Ministry, to recall any products from specific batches that could contain the contaminated ingredients.

Outcry after Women’s Day magazine appoints a ‘rabbi in residence’ and chooses a man

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/outcry-after-womens-day-magazine-appoints-a-rabbi-in-residence-and-chooses-a-man/

In fact, while the majority of newly ordained Reform rabbis in recent years have been women, the vast majority of living rabbis affiliated with the movement are men, and the movement’s own analyses have found wide, and in some cases growing, pay gaps between women and men in synagogue pulpits.

The movement is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its first woman rabbi this year, making Woman’s Day’s decision all the more painful, Laufer said

Monday, April 25, 2022

The 'Lebanese Groom' arrives in Israel

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/326341

A Lebanese born man who found himself at the center of a scandal in Brooklyn’s Syrian Jewish community last year is in Israel now, and has declared his intentions to spend the rest of his life in the Jewish state.

In October 2021, Eliya Hawila married a young Syrian-Jewish woman in Brooklyn, New York in an Orthodox Jewish ceremony – despite having been raised in a Shi’ite Muslim family in southern Lebanon.

Shortly thereafter, Hawila’s bride and her family discovered his background, with the couple separating and news of the ‘Lebanese groom’ sending shockwaves through the Orthodox community.

Hawila later apologized for the deception, but insisted he is sincere in his desire to live as an Orthodox Jew, and said he hopes to reconcile with his estranged wife.

In early April 2022, however, a Brooklyn rabbi who investigates questions regarding Jewish ancestry found that Hawila was in fact born Jewish.

Sunday, April 24, 2022

Pam Shriver had ‘traumatic’ relationship with 50-year-old coach when she was 17

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/apr/20/pam-shriver-had-traumatic-affair-with-50-year-old-coach-when-she-was-17 

The 22-time grand slam doubles champion Pam Shriver says she had an “inappropriate and damaging relationship” with her coach which started when she was a teenager, and has warned that similar scenarios are commonplace in tennis.

Fallen angels?

 Yoma (67b) The School of R. Ishmael taught: Azazel —it was so called because it obtains atonement for the affair of Uza and Aza'el.-

Rashi (Yoma 67b) עוזא ועזאל - מלאכי חבלה שירדו לארץ בימי נעמה אחות תובל קין ועליהם נאמר ויראו בני האלהים את בנות האדם (בראשית ו׳:ב׳) כלומר על העריות מכפר:

Maharsha (Yoma 67b) עזא ועזאל כו'. פרש"י מלאכי חבלה שירדו כו' ועליהן נאמר ויראו בני האלהים את בנות וגו' ע"ש וכה"ג פרש"י במס' נדה פ' האשה גבי סיחון ועוג אחי הוו בני שמחזאי כו' וקרא נקט הני שאפשר שהם היו עיקר:

Ritva (Yoma 67b) על מעשה עזה ועזאל. פרש״י ז״ל שני מלאכי חבלה שירדו לארץ בימי נעמה אחות תובל קין ועליהם נאמר ויראו בני האלקים את בנות האדם ע״כ. ולזה רמז הרמב״ן ז״ל בפי׳ התורה שלו במה שכתב הנפילים היו בארץ שאמר ז״ל שהענין ההוא מתפרש במסכת יומא:

Otzar Medrashim אגדת עוזא ועזאל נזכרת בגמרא בשם דבי ר׳ ישמעאל אמרו, עזאזל היא שעיר המשתלח מכפר על מעשה עוזא ועזאל (יומא ס״ז:), ופירש״י מלאכי חבלה שירדו לארץ בימי נעמה אחות תובל קין ועליהם נאמר ויראו בני האלהים אה בנות האדם כי טובות הנה וגו', כלומר על העריות מכפר. ועזאל הוא קיצור מעזאזל, והוא מדרש בדברים רבה (בסוף): אמרה (נשמה של משה) לפניו, רבש״ע מֵאֵצֶל שכינתך ממרום ירדו שני מלאכים עוזא ועזאל וחמדו בנות ארצות והשחיתו דרכם על הארץ עד שתלית אותן בין הארץ לרקיע (עי׳ זהר בראשית נ״ה ע״א). ושעיר העזאזל בא לכפר על מעשי עוזא ועזאל שהיו מתעים בני אדם בתאות המשגל והעריות, ואפשר שזה הטעם שקורין פרשת עריות ביוה״כ למנחה. במדרש אבכיר נזכרת האגדה בשם שמחזאי ועזאל, והובאה גם בילקוט שמעוני על הפסוק ויראו בני האלהים וגו׳.

Saturday, April 23, 2022

Madison Cawthorn photos reveal him wearing women’s lingerie in public setting

 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/22/madison-cawthorn-photos-00027286

 Cawthorn, who was paralyzed from the waist down as a passenger in a car accident in Florida in 2014, in recent months has called Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “thug,” suggested teetotaling Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has a drinking problem, and racked up a collection of traffic transgressions including speeding, driving with expired tags and driving with a revoked license. He has court dates in May and June.