Tuesday, April 18, 2023
Mother's fault
Rabbeinu Bachya (Vayikra 24:11) Whenever someone displays signs of effrontery and disdain towards the Jewish religion and G’d it is time to examine his maternal genealogy as it is certain that the droplet of sperm which such an individual grew out of reflected a negative deed or thought at the time when marital relations which produced that baby took place.
Are Democrats Becoming Anti-Israel?
https://momentmag.com/are-democrats-becoming-anti-israel/
While Democrats might increasingly view Palestinians more favorably than Israelis, there is still no real political force behind this shift. Going back to the Gallup survey, it is interesting to look at another question, one in which Americans were asked to grade foreign countries by their favorability. On this measure, Israel still maintains an extremely high showing, with 68 percent of participants in the poll expressing a favorable view of the Jewish state, while the Palestinian Authority gets a favorable rating from only 26 percent of Americans.
How can we reconcile this figure with the head-to-head sympathy question that puts Palestinians in advantage among Democrats? Let’s dive into the numbers.
Israel’s favorability crosses political boundaries, with 82 percent of Republicans and 56 percent of Democrats viewing it favorably. Favorability of the Palestinian Authority, on the other hand, is low across the board: Only 36 percent of Democrats and a mere 9 percent of Republicans view it favorably.
Furthermore, the overall favorability of Palestinians, though slightly up compared to most years in the past two decades, is still at just 31 percent.
The Partisan Gap in Support for Israel Seems Permanent
https://www.cfr.org/blog/partisan-gap-support-israel-seems-permanent
“Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to view the Israeli people favorably and the Palestinian people unfavorably (44% vs. 12%).” Pew also found that “Republicans and those who lean to the GOP are much more likely to express a favorable view of the Israeli people (78%) than of the Palestinian people (37%). Among Democrats and Democratic leaners, on the other hand, similar shares express favorable views toward both groups (60% and 64%, respectively).”
Dealing with sinful Jews
Sefer Chasidim (76) Do not punish an Israelite, nor curse him but pray for him that G-d make his heart whole and return him to right conduct. Do not invoke judgement on him saying, “The Lord should avenge me from his hand and visit evil upon him according to his wickedness.” For he who invokes divine judgement upon his neighbor, the attribute of justice comes before G-d, and says, “Lord of all the Universe, shall we then acquiesce to his request? he is deserving to be punished for such and such…
Helpless feelings
Friday night in shul I was approached by a young man whose water filled eyes indicated heavy medication. He said "I am manic depressive and I can't do anything. please help me. I asked how? He responded Give me a beracha because treatment isn't working
Tucker Carlson Duped By Fake Russian Propaganda Docs on Ukraine War
https://www.thedailybeast.com/tucker-carlson-gets-fooled-by-russian-propaganda-docs-from-sarah-bils
Tucker Carlson laid into President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Thursday, accusing them of committing “crimes” in their support of Ukraine. He referenced a “leaked” Pentagon slideshow that, Carlson said, proves the American people are being lied to about the status of the war in Ukraine. “The second thing we learned from these slides is that despite direct U.S. involvement, Ukraine is in fact losing the war,” Carlson said last week. “Seven Ukrainians are being killed for every Russian. Ukrainian air defenses have been utterly degraded. Ukraine is losing. The Biden administration is perfectly aware of this.” As it turns out, Carlson is the one peddling lies about Ukraine to the American people—the slides he referenced were apparently doctored by a known Russian propagandist that lives in the United States. “Tucker Carlson pushed a fake version of a U.S. intelligence document about Ukrainian war casualties,” said Yahoo News senior correspondent Michael Weiss on Twitter. “It was doctored by a fraud podcaster who claimed to be a Russian woman from Luhansk. In reality, Sarah Bils is a former U.S. Navy clerk from New Jersey—and she pocketed all the money she claimed to raise for Russian causes.”
The Rebbe on the Holocaust
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/64888/jewish/The-Rebbe-on-the-Holocaust.htm
But the most important thing about the Holocaust to the Rebbe was not how we do or do not understand it, nor, even, how we memorialize its victims, but what we do about it. If we allow the pain and despair to dishearten us from raising a new generation of Jews with a strong commitment to their Jewishness, then Hilter's "final solution" will be realized, G‑d forbid. But if we rebuild, if we raise a generation proud of and committed to their Jewishness, we will have triumphed.
The truth about crime in Manhattan
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/17/politics/fact-check-manhattan-crime-trump-bragg/index.html
Trump claimed in March that Bragg “has watched Violent Crime in Manhattan soar to Record Highs” and that “killings are taking place at a number like nobody’s ever seen, right in Manhattan.”
These claims are not even close to true. Manhattan’s recent levels of violent crime in general and murder in particular are way down from the record levels of the early 1990s.
New York City publishes crime statistics on its website, so the truth is easy to find. In 1990, when the city set its all-time record for total murders, there were 503 recorded murders in Manhattan, which is one of the city’s five boroughs. In 2022, Manhattan recorded 78 murders – a decline of about 84% from 1990.
Monday, April 17, 2023
Americans’ Complex Views on Gender Identity and Transgender Issues
Democrats and those who lean to the Democratic Party are more than four times as likely as Republicans and Republican leaners to say that a person’s gender can be different from the sex they were assigned at birth (61% vs. 13%). Democrats are also much more likely than Republicans to say our society hasn’t gone far enough in accepting people who are transgender (59% vs. 10%). For their part, 66% of Republicans say society has gone too far in accepting people who are transgender.
Alvin Bragg defends plea deal in brazen antisemitic attack
https://jewishinsider.com/2023/01/alvin-bragg-new-york-hate-crimes-antisemitism/
In a demographic breakdown of his office’s open hate crimes investigations shared with JI, the highest number of cases, 44 in total, were said to be motivated by anti-Asian bias, followed by 32 cases involving members of the LGBTQ community. The hate crimes unit is currently working on 16 antisemitic cases, which represent the third largest share of hate crimes prosecutions now under the office’s purview.
Republican rep insists GOP senators are ‘pro-pedophile’
Indeed, a sitting member of the United States House of Representatives — a Republican in good standing, who’s poised to be rewarded by her party next year — assumed she could get away with accusing three senators from her own party of being “pro-pedophile,” without any meaningful pushback, because that’s where the contemporary right is now.
Why Republicans Are Smearing Everyone As Pedophiles
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/04/why-republicans-are-smearing-everyone-as-pedophiles-now.html
Not long ago, the notion that American politics was oriented around a dispute over the merits of child sexual exploitation was viewed as so loopy that not even Donald Trump could take it seriously. It is now becoming the Republican Party’s most energetic idea. The two most prominent theaters of partisan combat of the moment, the Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation and Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, have both seen a growing swath of conservatives embrace charges of pedophilia as their central theme.