Saturday, June 26, 2021

Bennet and his Arab "supporters"

 https://mishpacha.com/southern-squatters/

But there is an additional price to be paid. To grasp the real total that Naftali Bennett paid for Ra’am’s political support, you need to take a trip south to the Negev Desert, where vast areas have been swallowed in recent years by illegal Bedouin building. Aside from chairmanship of the Knesset’s Interior Committee and of the Arab Affairs Committee, Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas secured a clause stipulating the legalization of three Bedouin villages in the Negev as well as a review of the status of 11 others.

Schumer Intervening in Fixsler Case

 https://hamodia.com/2021/06/25/schumer-intervening-fixsler-case/

 U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer is intervening in the case of Alta Fixsler, a brain-damaged, 2-year-old Jewish girl in the U.K. at risk of being removed from life support by a hospital in Manchester against her family’s will.

Alta’s family has waged a battle to keep his daughter alive. Her mother is an Israeli citizen, and her father an American. If Alta is unable to remain on life support in the U.K., the family is hoping to at least be able transport her to Israel or America for treatment.

Jewish activists have been working on getting the Israeli and U.S. governments involved in the case, to either pressure the British to keep Alta on life support or transport her to one of those countries.

 

Friday, June 25, 2021

Can Vitamin D Help Protect against COVID?

 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-vitamin-d-help-protect-against-covid/

 Given the results of Neale’s large-scale study and the modest benefits found in Martineau’s latest meta-analysis, it seems unlikely that vitamin D will prove to be a critical ingredient in fending off COVID-19 or modulating its severity. But these and other new trials may find it is useful in certain doses for certain populations. As Neale points out, “there is data that is suggestive” and enough smoke to indicate that you don’t want to be vitamin-D-deficient in a pandemic.

NYC mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa said Orthodox Jews are trying to take over the city

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/308717

 Video from 2018 surfaced this week of Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate for mayor of New York City, describing Orthodox Jews as a drag on the tax system.

“We’re not talking about poor, impoverished, disabled people who need help, we’re talking about able-bodied men who study Torah and Talmud all day and we subsidize them,” Sliwa says in the video. “And then all they do is make babies like there’s no tomorrow and who’s subsidizing that? We are.

“So are we the shmucks and putzes? Yes.”

Same-sex marriage in New York: A milestone a decade in the making

 https://www.lohud.com/story/news/2021/06/23/gay-marriage-ny-decade-later-same-sex-lgbtq-rights/7604811002/

 Marriage equality is one of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s earliest achievements, arriving at the end of the first legislative session of his first term, on June 24, 2011. Cuomo brokered the passage, convincing four Republican senators to cast votes of conscience to pass the bill.

The vote was a nail-biter. Not until Sen. Stephen Saland, R-Poughkeepsie, rose and gave his support was passage assured.

Israeli embassies fly the rainbow flag for pride month

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/308724

Israel’s embassies around the world have raised the rainbow flag today in accordance with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid’s directives, including in London, Oslo, and Vienna.

The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem raised a rainbow flag last Tuesday, and Foreign Minister Lapid said: "For the first time ever this morning, I ordered the Foreign Ministry to fly the pride flag for pride month events. The Foreign Ministry and its employees carry a message of tolerance and freedom."

It should be noted that Yair Lapid's deputy in the Foreign Ministry, Idan Roll, belongs to the LGBT community and lives with his partner, singer and songwriter Harel Skaat.

 

This is what we know about those missing in the Miami condo collapse

 https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/24/us/miami-building-collapse-victims-missing/index.html

 Jewish community members missing, rabbis say

Some members from The Shul of Bal Harbour synagogue are among the 99 people unaccounted for, Rabbi Sholom Lipskar told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.
"This is something that transcends our capacity for understanding," Lipskar said about the collapse. "It's a reality, we accept it and we have to learn as we do in our culture of resilience to move forward."
The outpouring of support has been unprecedented, Lipskar said.
"There are way more volunteers than we can use. Our synagogue big hall, which is a giant space, is filled with blankets, pillows, microwave ovens, chargers, food. It is an extraordinary outpouring and it's real and it's sincere," he said.
"The only thing that helps in these times is kindness and empathy and togetherness, because you can't take away the reality," Lipskar said, and for each family member waiting for news from a loved one, there are about five or six community members with them, giving support.

Temple in Jerusalem

 https://www.duhoctrungquoc.vn/wiki/en/Temple_in_Jerusalem

In his novel The Old New Land, depicting the future Jewish State as he envisioned it, Theodor Herzl – founder of political Zionism – included a depiction of a rebuilt Jerusalem Temple. However, in Herzl's view, the Temple did not need to be built on the precise site where the old Temple stood and which is now taken up by the Muslim Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock, which are very sensitive holy sites. By locating the Temple at an unspecified different Jerusalem location, the Jewish state envisioned by Herzl avoids the extreme tension over this issue experienced in the actual Israel. Also, worship at the Temple envisioned by Herzl does not involve animal sacrifice, which was the main form of worship at the ancient Jerusalem Temple. Rather, the Temple depicted in Herzl's book is essentially just an especially big and ornate synagogue, holding the same kind of services as any other synagogue.

Dr. Theodor Herzl & Building the 3rd Temple

 https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/dr-theodor-herzl-building-the-3rd-temple/

Yesterday marked the commemoration of the 17th of Tammuz, a day of fasting and reflection and the start of the “three week” mourning period culminating in the somber day of remembrance Tisha BaAv, the Ninth of Av. In addition to the other misfortunes which befell the Jewish people on this day, traditionally the 17th of Tammuz is the day when the walls of Jerusalem were breached in 69 C.E. leading to the destruction of the 2nd Temple 3 weeks later on the Ninth of Av. Throughout the centuries, the Jewish people have used this time period for both personal as well as national introspection. For the vast majority of people the Temple and its destruction, is only used as an instructive teaching platform for broader moral lessons. For many the questions and introspection focuses on the following: What was the root cause of the destruction? How can we make sure to not fall prey to it again? Do we see similar trends in the Modern State of Israel, and if so how should we combat those trends? However, regrettably, there seems to be only a small minority of the Jewish people who ponder and contemplate the need for the actual physical rebuilding of the Temple. What purpose did the Temple serve, and what meaning and insight would its rebuilding hold for the Jewish People Today?

Health Ministry official: 'No surprise' that the fully vaccinated are contracting Covid-19

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/308713

 He added that, “We weren’t surprised to discover that people who were fully vaccinated are among those contracting coronavirus now. Around the time when we emerged from the third wave of the virus, there were hundreds of vaccinated people contracting Covid-19, and some of them even died. So of course we're seeing that again now.”

Thursday, June 24, 2021

Israeli Pfizer official: COVID vaccine effective against Delta variant

 https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israeli-pfizer-official-covid-vaccine-effective-against-delta-variant-671903

 The Pfizer-BioNTech  vaccine is highly effective against the Delta variant of COVID-19, a Pfizer official in Israel said on Thursday.

First identified in India, Delta is becoming the globally dominant version of the coronavirus, according to the World Health Organization.
"The data we have today, accumulating from research we are conducting at the lab and including data from those places where the Indian variant, Delta, has replaced the British variant as the common variant, point to our vaccine being very effective, around 90%, in preventing the coronavirus disease, COVID-19," Alon Rappaport, Pfizer's medical director in Israel, told local broadcaster Army Radio.

Government admits that half of new Covid-19 cases in last month were fully vaccinated

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/308653

Head of Public Health Services, Dr. Sharon Alray-Price, revealed the disturbing facts at a media presentation on Wednesday. According to her data, of the 891 cases of coronavirus confirmed in the last month alone, half had received both doses of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine.

 

אלפי ישראלים נסעו ל'מדינות אסורות' ולא נבדקו ל'קורונה'

 https://www.kikar.co.il/395037.html

 חלם: ישראלים טסים למדינות אסורות דרך מדינה שלישית. בשובם, איש לא בודק דרכונם • משרד הבריאות: "המשטרה אחראית". המשטרה: "מנהלת ההגירה אחראית"

Wednesday, June 23, 2021

New COVID cases top 100 for 2nd day; virus czar: Masks may soon return indoors

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/virus-czar-says-indoor-mask-mandate-could-come-back-tomorrow/

As new coronavirus cases rise in Israel amid an outbreak of the Delta variant, virus czar Nachman Ash said Wednesday that health officials would present the government with possible actions to curb the pandemic, including a potential imminent return of the indoor mask mandate.

Ash spoke as the Health Ministry said another 110 new coronavirus cases were identified in Israel the previous day, taking the number of active cases to 554. Tuesday’s new cases included 64 children and teens, and 14 individuals entering the country from overseas, the Kan public broadcaster reported.

“We’ll determine when to bring back the obligation to wears masks in closed spaces,” Ash told 103FM Radio. “It could be tomorrow or the day after.”