Tuesday, October 29, 2024
Rav Avigdor MiIler claims conservative candidates, police brutality, stern justice and capital punishment are indispensable for the welfare of society
Rav Shach - Dialectics and understanding Gedolim
1) My son learned in Ponevich in Rav Schach's time and related the following story which circulated the Yeshiva when Rav Shach was niftar.
This is intimately connected with another story.
5) This was once expressed to me very bluntly by Rabbi Eliyahu Essas - one of the heroes of the Russian refusenik era. I mentioned to him that I had a set of mishnayos translated into Russian -my grandmother got it as an engagement present. I told him perhaps he would be interested in reprinting it to aid the Russian baalei teshuva. He replied with an irritated tone. You Americans are always looking for the easy way to do things. Russians know that the only way to be a scholar is to master Hebrew and learn the original. American's rely too much on crutches and don't learn to walk on their own."
Hopefully this answers Shloime's question - if not - perhaps it will be enlightening to another reader of this blog.
History - The Funeral Controversy
From articles written for the Yated Neeman (USA)When is a corpse not a corpse? When it's still alive of course!
by Avraham Broide
(Jerusalem based translator and journalist.
phone: 02-5856133; email: broide2@netvision.net.il)
Determining the moment of death is a subject that has many doctors and rabbis at loggerheads. Doctors are anxious to push forward the moment of death in order to save lives with transplants, while rabbis argue that there is no point killing Peter in order to save Paul.
There was once a time when the rabbis fought a very different battle. During the 18th Century, many people thought it barbaric to bury a person too soon, as who knows, perhaps he was still alive. They preferred to wait for only certain determinant of death, physical decomposition, which generally begins after three days.
Rabbis, on the other hand, wanted to bury people before nightfall, due to the Torah's command regarding a criminal whose body was hanged up as a warning (Devarim 21:23), "Do not leave his body overnight on the gallows, for you shall certainly bury him on that day." As the Shulchan Aruch" (Yoreh Dei'ah 357:1) rules, "It is forbidden to leave the dead [unburied] overnight unless it was for his honor, to bring him a coffin and shrouds."
During 5532/1772 things came to a head when the Mecklenburg Province of Germany outlawed prompt burial and legislated that three days must pass beforehand. When German rabbis raised a protest, Moses Mendelssohn was called on to intercede and he promptly found sources that seemed to support the government measure.
For example, a mishnah in Masseches Semachos relates how someone recovered from a death like coma and lived for another 25 years. Because of this, the mishnah says, people buried their dead in catacombs, instead of burying them underground, so that they could visit them for several days afterwards and ascertain their death status. If the corpse yelled or tapped on the walls of his stone coffin, there was still a chance to yank him out. Practically speaking, Mendelssohn had a point, as it is not unheard of for people to suddenly wake up and find themselves in a morgue.
One example of such pseudo-death may be Alexander's passing in 3439/323 BCE, when his body reportedly remained fresh several days afterwards. Some medical men theorize that he may have been suffering from a paralyzing disease.
The Yaavetz rejected Mendelssohn's proofs. Regarding the fear that Jews who determine death as the moment a person ceases breathing might determine someone as dead when he is really alive, the Yaavetz insisted that Moshe Rabeinu received this criteria of death at Sinai or that it is revealed in the verse, Kol asher ruach chayim be'apo (Whatever has the breath of life in its nose), from where the rabbis derive that before digging someone out of a ruin on Shabbos, we check whether he is breathing or not.
As for Mendelssohn's proof from masseches Semachos, the Yaavetz writes that such things happen so rarely that we need not be concerned about them on a practical basis. It is as rare, he says, as the case of Choni Ha'eme'agel who slept for seventy years!
This controversy led to one of the first formal move of Jews away from Jewish custom and law.
When the Berlin Chevra Kaddisha refused to succumb to the Maskilim's demands, some Maskilim, including Mendolssohn's son, Josef, opened up their own burial organization called the "Gesellschaft der Freunde" ("Society of Friends") in Berlin, with branches in Breslau and Konigsberg, which delayed burying the dead and eventually adopted many other non-Jewish funeral customs as well.
A man was wheeled into surgery to harvest his organs. Weeks later, he left the hospital alive
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/28/health/organ-donor-surgery-kentucky-investigation/index.html
The medical records Rhorer has for TJ say he was “declared brain-dead patient being maintained for harvesting of organs” on October 29. TJ underwent procedures to make sure his organs were fit for donation, and that afternoon, hospital workers came to the family and told them it was time.
They held what’s known as an honor walk, a tradition in many hospitals when someone donates organs. A video shot by Rhorer’s friend and posted on TikTok shows TJ in a bed being rolled down a corridor. Hospital staff stop what they are doing, line the halls and stand in silence in their blue scrubs and white coats. Some hold tissues and dab at their eyes.
Will Trump’s and Johnson’s ‘Little Secret’ Be Unveiled on January 6?
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trumpjohnson-secret-unveiled-january-6.html
As Politico Playbook noted, this remark could be interpreted as “a reference to the House settling a contested election.” It is universally understood that Johnson holds his gavel strictly at the sufferance of Trump. And it’s a plain fact that the then-obscure Louisianan was the 45th president’s congressional floor leader in seeking to overturn the confirmation of Joe Biden’s election on January 6, 2021. But it’s not just a matter of previous experience of an insurrectionary alliance between Trump and Johnson. Capitol Hill has been buzzing for a while (per a Politico report last month) about the Speaker’s potential role in another bid to overturn another election defeat, which Trump clearly intends to do if the opportunity arises:
Outcry over Trump’s hint at ‘little secret’ with House Republicans
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/28/trump-mike-johnson-little-secret-election
Some observers and Democratic politicians believed the most telling remark of the night came from the Republican nominee himself after he introduced Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, on stage and alluded to a shared secret.
“We gotta get the congressmen elected and we gotta get the senators elected,” Trump told the crowd, referring to the congressional elections at stake next week.
“We can take the Senate pretty easily, and I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House. Our little secret is having a big impact. He and I have a little secret – we will tell you what it is when the race is over.”
Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s running mate celebrated the Oct. 7 attack on Israel
https://www.jpost.com/american-politics/article-826568
Stein has made opposition to Israel’s military campaign and US support for it a centerpiece of her campaign. Campaign videos show her wearing a keffiyeh or Palestinian scarf, and she recently shared a post by an account named “Kamala Harris is murdering Palestinian children.” On Monday, she posted, “A vote for Harris/Trump enables genocide. We can’t normalize the mass murder of children. As Gaza goes, we all go.”
Israel outlaws UNWRA, bucking international pressure
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-826525
The Knesset plenum approved final voting for two bills aimed at blocking the activity in areas under Israeli control of the UN Relief and Works Agency, which services Palestinian refugees in east Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank.Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman MK Yuli Edelstein presented both bills in the plenum. According to Edelstein, UNRWA’s operations “eternalized” the issue of Palestinian refugees.
In addition, Edelstein cited the fact that UNRWA employees had participated in, and even served as commanders, in the October 7 Hamas massacre. Edelstein also mentioned incitement in UNRWA school curriculums. According to Edelstein, the time had come to ban the agency from Israel.
Elon Musk is sharing some details about his immigration path. Experts say they still have questions
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/28/us/elon-musk-immigration-washington-post-cec/index.html
Atlanta immigration attorney Charles Kuck says Musk stating that he had a J-1 visa makes it clear he worked illegally, given the restrictions that would have only allowed work in connection with his academic program.
“So clearly, he’s admitting now that in fact, he did work illegally and violate his status. The only question is at that point, what did he do to fix his status violation?” Kuck says.
Confederate anthem ‘Dixie’ played at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally
Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden, meant to demonstrate broad-based and unifying support as he seeks a second term, was marked by racist barbs amid other demeaning insults.
It also featured a song that had little in common with the location: “Dixie,” the unofficial national anthem of the Confederate States of America.
Trump's New York Rally Was Moment That Ended His Campaign: Geraldo Rivera
https://www.newsweek.com/geraldo-rivera-donald-trump-msg-rally-puerto-rico-1976328
"You know, Madison Square Garden is famous for a lot of things," he continued. "I think it will be famous for ending President Trump's meteoric campaign to be reelected. I think that the surveys, the polls will show that this was the time, this was the moment where things turned on Donald Trump."
Monday, October 28, 2024
Embracing racism, rabbis at pre-army yeshiva laud Hitler, urge enslaving Arabs
In another clip from the Bnei David Yeshiva published by Channel 13, Rabbi Giora Redler can be heard praising Hilter’s ideology during a lesson about the Holocaust.
“Let’s just start with whether Hitler was right or not,” he told students. “He was the most correct person there ever was, and was correct in every word he said… he was just on the wrong side.”
Redler goes on to say that pluralism is the “real” genocide being perpetrated against the Jewish people, not Nazi Germany’s Final Solution.
The Jewish leadership in Germany and the Nazi threat in 1933
Jewish collaboration with Nazi Germany
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_collaboration_with_Nazi_Germany
Jewish Support for the Nazi Ascent to Power
During the Nazis' ascent to power, some Jewish organizations, such as the Association of German National Jews and The German Vanguard supported nazism until being outlawed in late 1935. Motivated by anticommunism, conservative nationalism, Zionism, and anti-liberalism, these groups had initially believed that Nazi antisemitism was merely rhetorical hyperbole or a tactic to "stir up the masses".[1][2][3]