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Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology, and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.

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RABBI SCHWARTZ'S TERRIBLE SUKKOS 5781 JOKES OF THE WEEK

Because of the lockdown regulations this year, guests are not permitted in your Sukkah. In place of Ushpizin, we will be doing Ushpi-zoom. You are not allowed to be caught in a sukkah that is not yours. So all the Kollel guys are chipping in with 5 shekels to be partners in each other's Sukka.

If they keep the schools closed after Sukkos, I think that the parents will find a vaccine faster than the scientists… Will the guy that usually has the custom to poke his neighbor in the eye with his Lulav please make sure that his Lulav this year will be at least 2 meters long so he can stand socially distanced away.

I'm in a lot of trouble with this Corona. The government doesn't want me at work. My wife doesn't want me in the house and the police don't want me in the streets. My Lulav was just flown in from America. Unfortunately, it isn't allowed out of it's protective case for 14 days…

So the Gerrer Chasid's wife is all upset at him when he comes home with his Esrog after hours of shopping for it. She doesn't understand." It took you a half-hour of meeting with me before we agreed to get married and the Esrog took you 6 hours to decide which one you want?!" "What don't you understand," he said, "with the Esrog I walk together on the street…"

The Three Musketeers at the Kotel

The imaginary walls of a sukka

Without the Oral Law's detailed descriptions, we would not be able to build the more open sukkas we need this year.

Rabbi Berel Wein

The holiday of Succot is, perhaps, unique amongst all the holidays of the Jewish calendar year. The laws pertaining to the commandments particular to this holiday are almost all exclusively derived from the oral law given to our teacher Moshe on Sinai

There is no way that a succah can be successfully and traditionally constructed without recourse to the intricacies and nuances that the oral law that the Torah provides for us. This will be especially true for this holiday, that is so burdened by the terrible Corona virus that afflicts the world.

Here in Israel where a lockdown is in force, the construction of succot is much more muted and minimal than in previous years. There is a far greater reliance upon the so-called imaginary walls that the oral law envisions for us, to somehow be halakhically acceptable and valid, and allows much outside air to enter and escape, as mandated by the health authorities.

Simply reading the text in the Torah itself does not allow for partial walls to be considered as complete walls, and for walls and roofs to be considered as touching each other, even though strictly speaking to our human eyes, they do not touch.

There are myriad laws involved in the proper construction of a succah. But these laws are not readily apparent from the reading of the text of the Torah itself. It is only the oral law that breathes life into words and letters of the Torah and gives them meaning and practical vitality.

'Moderate Democrats don't have the guts to stand up,' says Dershowitz about anti-Semitism in the party

September 22, 2020

'Moderate Democrats don't have the guts to stand up,' says Dershowitz about anti-Semitism in the party

Attorney Alan Dershowitz. (Flash90/Miriam Alster)

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"The moderate Democrats don't have courage. They don't have the guts to stand up," said attorney Alan Dershowitz in a discussion about anti-Semitism on the left.

By World Israel News Staff

"There are elements within the Democratic Party that support boycotting Israel, and do support silencing students on college campuses," attorney Alan Dershowitz said on "The Cats Roundtable," a show aired on WABC 770 AM in New York.

"Will the moderate Democrats have the courage to stand up to the so-called 'crazy' Democrats?" asked the show's host, billionaire entrepreneur John Catsimatidis.

Catsimatidis' question followed a discussion of "the squad," a group of anti-Israel Democratic congresswomen which include Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

Omar and Tlaib remain dogged by persistent accusations of anti-Semitism based on comments promoting the dual loyalty canard about Jews and Israel, promotion of the Palestinian-run BDS movement, and suggestions that pro-Israel groups exert undue influence on the U.S. political system.

"Courage? Are you kidding? Does anybody today have courage in politics?" answered Dershowitz. "The answer is no," he continued. "The moderate Democrats don't have courage. They don't have the guts to stand up."

Dershowitz continued, "The Republicans have had more courage standing up to some anti-Semites in their party. And they have gotten rid of them and marginalized them. I wish the Democrats would learn from the Republicans on that issue."

When Catsimatidis asked Dershowitz whether President Donald Trump would receive the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering peace in the Middle East between Israel and Arab nations, Dershowitz responded, "Well he certainly should maybe get the one given to Barack Obama."

"Obama got the peace prize while he was in office like a month for doing nothing, and he has been one of the worst foreign policy presidents," Dershowitz added, calling the Iran nuclear deal a "disaster for peace."

"If you were going to ask me which president deserves a Nobel Peace Prize as between Barack Obama and Donald Trump, it's not even a close question."

Arab Muslims are People of Color, Arab Christians are White

By Daniel Greenfield

Maintaining its proud commitment to printing all the news that will divide Americans by race, sex, and creed, the New York Times published a list of what it claimed were the "922 of the most powerful people in America" while claiming that only 20% of them are people of color.

The term "people of color" is already ambiguous enough with white professors, grad students, and NAACP presidents claiming to be black. But the New York Times' racial list, a thing reeking of Nuremberg and Goebbels, put the paper in charge of deciding who is a person of color by marking them with yellow. It's a good thing no notorious racist ideology had the same idea.

(The Times had previously published a list of members of Congress who had voted against aiding Iran's nuclear ambitions and terrorist regime by marking Jewish members in yellow.)

Like all racist Rohrsarch charts, the Times' racial list says more about it than about America.

The Times claimed that only 112 of the 431 House of Representatives members are people of color. It lists Rep. Rashida Tlaib as a person of color, while listing Rep. Justin Amash as white.

Tlaib's parents and Amash's father came from Arab towns and neighborhoods in Israel. Amash's mother came from Syria. They both have traditional Arab names.

How is Tlaib a person of color while Amash is white?

The Amash and Tlaib clans both have a sizable presence in Israel. They're both Arabs, but, aside from Tlaib being a militant leftist while Amash is an ex-GOP Never Trumper, the only obvious difference is that Amash's family was Christian while Tlaib's family is Muslim.

The New York Times' message is that Muslims are "people of color" and Christians aren't. It doesn't matter if their families might have lived some 20 minutes away from each other.

Arab Christians are white while Arab Muslims are a minority group.

As Twitter observers of the New York Times racial list noted, the paper of racial record appears to invariably list Arab Christians as white, while Muslims are described as people of color.

"24 people lead the Trump administration. 3 are Asian, Black or Hispanic," the New York Times insisted. That doesn't include Alex Azar, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, whose grandparents came from Lebanon, and Mark Esper, the Secretary of Defense, whose grandfather emigrated from Lebanon. The Times likewise lists Governor Chris Sununu, of partial Lebanese and Arab Israeli descent, as white, and certainly not a person of color.

What makes an Arab immigrant from Israel, Lebanon, or Syria, white? Christianity.

Israeli Jews, like Lyor Cohen, YouTube's Global Head of Music, also don't qualify. The New York Times lists Cohen, the son of Israeli immigrants, as yet another white non-person of color.

It's not just Jews or Arabs who aren't considered minorities unless they're Muslim.

Rep. Anna Eshoo's father was an Assyrian Christian who, in her own words, "was driven from the Middle East." The New York Times still lists her as white. Assyrians and Armenians are not people of color. The difference isn't, as we see in Amash and Tlaib's case, racial, it's religious.

It doesn't matter whether you come from Syrian, Lebanon, Iraq or even Iran: if you're not a practicing Muslim, you're white.

Take the case of Farnam Jahanian, the Iranian immigrant who became the president of Carnegie Mellon. Jahanian came to America before the Islamic Revolution and enrolled in a Catholic school. The New York Times however decided that Jahanian is not a person of color.

He's just white.

While the New York Times has a very rigid standard for being a person of color from the Middle East, it has a very loose one for being a person of color as long as they have Spanish ancestry.

Or speak Spanish.

The New York Times' attempt at defining race leads to awkward absurdities. It lists MIT President Rafael Reif, the son of Eastern European Jewish immigrants to Venezuela, as a person of color, while next to him, Michigan University President Mark Schlissel, whose family came to America, without first going through Venezuela, is listed as plain old white.

Rep. Devin Nunes is listed as a person of color because his Portugese ancestors moved to America in the 19th century. Rep. Mike Levin, whose mother is Mexican qualifies, but Senator Pat Toomey, whose mother is of Portugese ancestry, doesn't meet the Times' racial test.

Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, of the powerful Lujan family, which has dominated New Mexico politics, has her governorship treated as an accomplishment for the oppressed.

"Of the people in charge of the 25 highest-valued fashion companies, 3 are Asian or Hispanic," the Times huffs.

2 of the 3 are Pablo Isla, a successful Spanish businessman who runs a huge Spanish company, and Tadashi Yanai, who runs a huge Japanese company. Is celebrating the accomplishments of Spanish and Japanese tycoons in their own countries supposed to represent some sort of resistance to discrimination and racial inequity in America?

Why is a Spanish businessman listed as evidence of racial progress while Greek businessmen, including Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, who was born to an electrician in Phoenix, are just white guys whose success demonstrates that America is a racist nation defined by its color lines?

And that cuts to the absurdity of defining someone whose family came from Spain as a person of color, while those immigrants whose families came from Italy and Greece are white guys. Why are Portugese and Basque immigrants people of color, and Greeks and Italians aren't?

But if the New York Times appears to be vague on what makes someone a person of color if they speak Spanish, it's quite firm on what it takes to be legitimately from the Middle East.

It's no coincidence that the New York Times has adopted the same idea as ISIS, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Mohammed, that non-Muslims don't have any place in the Middle East.

The Left barely polices the boundaries of Latino or Indian identity. Even black identity is so loosely policed that white leftists have been able to get away with pretending to be black. But when it comes to the Middle East, it recognizes only one group of people as legitimate.

Its conquerors.

Christians, Jews, and non-practicing Muslims need not apply. When it comes to other groups, the categories are drawn around race, ethnicity, and even immigration status. But in the Middle East, it doesn't matter if your parents or grandparents emigrated from Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, or Syria. Their ethnic ancestry doesn't matter either. Only one thing matters: religion. Islam.

This pernicious bigotry was used to cut off immigration for Christian refugees during the Obama administration while welcoming in Muslim migrants, a perverse reversal of oppression in a region whose Christian population is vanishing under the fire and fury of Muslim persecution.

The New York Times' racial list is revealing when it comes to the prejudices and agendas of the allies of the Islamist movements and their organizations ethnically cleansing Christians.

The Left's twisted ideas about race lead it to present the region's persecuted Christian, Jewish, and non-Muslim minorities as white oppressors, while its Muslim supremacist majority are the oppressed people of color who need to be liberated from the oppression of their victims.

This isn't just twisted. It's an ideological argument for genocide.




The Portion of Ha'azinu The Power of Song The final commandment written in the Torah which is found in the previous portion of Vayelech, reads as follows: "And now, write for yourselves this song (Deuteronomy 31;19)". Every Jew is commanded to write for himself a Sefer Torah even if he inherited one from his parents. The song that every Jew is commanded to write is the Song of Ha'azinu which contains Moses' prophecy for the future. The Song consists of two parts: it is written in two columns with unwritten, blank space separating the columns. This structure gives equal weight to each and every word. But not only do the words have great significance- so do the formations of the letters Jeremiah's prophecy of the evil which will befall eight great and strong nations are alluded to in the unusual formation of the letter "chet" in the words "chatum b'otzrotai" (sealed amidst my treasures) and as such completes the understanding that the entire Torah is in fact one great song. (Sefer Rokeiach)

Mask Fanatics Have Officially Abandoned Science to Control Your Life

They know better than the experts they revered just months ago. Wed Sep 23, 2020

By Georgi Boorman, FPM

It's nothing new for political religions to produce radicals that develop their own sects or cults. This time around, rigid devotion to enforcing mask compliance has produced runaway fanaticism based on nothing but blind faith that more mask-wearing is always better. Even the public health experts, whom these followers all promoted as great prophets just months ago, can't tame their fervor.

That's a problem, because a return to normalcy will require subduing radical factions that agitate for oppression. Restrictions such as mask mandates are like oxygen to followers of radical fundamentalist Covidianism — the abiding belief that only lockdowns, social distancing, and masks can deliver us from the deadly pandemic. The longer mandates stay in place and experts continue promoting mask use — "My mask protects you! Your mask protects me!" — the stronger and more widespread the extremism will grow, and the less influence experts will have over their behavior.

The evidence is abundant, but consider these three cases of radical Covidianism and how they trace back to an abandonment of the scientific standards necessary to maintain public health and a functioning society.

1. Ignore the Dangers of Masking While Exercising

First, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed an executive order last week requiring all nonprofessional sports players to wear masks. Athletes, except for swimmers, must wear masks while "training for, practicing for, or competing in an organized sport" if they cannot "consistently maintain 6 feet of distance." There are no age-specific exceptions in the requirement, so it appears Whitmer's mask mandate for children five years old and over applies.

Not only does this order contradict guidance from so-called experts, who say that people exercising should not wear masks because sweat can clog the mask fibers and make breathing difficult as well as "promote the growth of microorganisms," but it overwrites Whitmer's own order specifying that masks do not have to be worn during exercise "when wearing a face covering would interfere with the activity."

How football, basketball, tennis, soccer, lacrosse, and other sports that aren't golf or bowling don't qualify as exercise that a mask "would interfere with" is beyond rationality. The science of sweat droplets clogging up mask fibers doesn't change if a person is exercising by himself or in a competitive setting, yet one can see in these orders the progression away from science and toward the fanatical desire to control people's behavior, regardless of the danger. While Whitmer says masks allow sports to resume, her requirement will likely mean exactly the opposite, as playing creates a health risk instead of a health benefit.

2. Mask the Babies

Second, a WestJet flight was canceled last week because a 19-month-old could not keep her mask on, despite the fact that infants and toddlers simply aren't spreading the virus. The father, Safwan Choudhry, called it "horrific and dehumanizing treatment." You can see what appear to be WestJet crew members harassing the poor family here:

Earlier today my family endure the most horrific & dehumanizing treatment onboard @WestJet plane. My wife was threatening to be arrested & forcibly removed unless my daughters, 3 yrs & 19 months would wear a mask. While my 3yrs wore her mask, the 19 months old was hysterical.

Transport Canada's official guidance for travelers says explicitly, "The following people should not wear a mask … children under 2 years old." Yet WestJet crew members, according to Choudhry, wrongly cited the guidance as requiring his infant to wear a mask. Official rules are apparently no hindrance to the mask crusaders, who will defend their universal masking standard to the point of canceling a flight.

3. Wear a Mask When You're Alone

Not to be outdone in anti-science zeal for total conformity, however, the third example is the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, which has asked agency employees to wear masks while teleconferencing from home. Natural Resources Secretary Preston Cole said in a July 31 email that in order to set a "safety example" showing that employees "care about the safety and health of others," they should wear a mask while participating in virtual meetings "that involve being seen."

The medical director of infection control at UW Health, Nasia Safdar, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that beyond protecting oneself from somebody else in the house with COVID-19, "there's no reason to routinely wear a mask in your home if the risk isn't there."

This is what happens, however, when scientific standards are abandoned for political goals only loosely tied to public health: Pseudo-scientific fanaticism develops, and its followers are obsessed with gaining compliance, not saving lives. One can draw a straight line from the initial departure from scientific evidence on lockdowns to the current coronavirus extremism, which only increases in intensity as deaths and hospitalizations decline.

Mask Fanatics Are the Real Science Deniers

Lockdowns were once called an "unproven" hypothesis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, its models of efficacy being invalidated by "empirical data." The World Health Organization called forced isolation and quarantine "ineffective and impractical." Yet despite the devastating effects of banning "nonessential" businesses and social activities, countries around the world locked down.

Groupthink on non-pharmaceutical interventions spurred an uncontrolled drift away from scientific justifications toward hasty generalized rules predicated on an "abundance of caution" and straight-up fear. Fear quickly turned into a tool for maintaining political power and an opportunity for self-righteous snitches to exercise control over their fellow countrymen. Snitch-level devotion to harsh government mandates devolved into a religion in its own right, and now we must suffer oppression not just from authorities, but from private companies and our fellow citizens.

One can draw numerous examples of Covidien jihad from any given week of these hellish past six months, but the progression is obvious. In April, a father was arrested for playing softball with his family in an open field in compliance with state orders. In July, a woman was berated by a fanatical old lady at the superstore for not masking her children, who are a risk approaching zero for spreading the virus.

Now heading into fall, some people are being asked to wear masks alone in their own homes, out in open parks, and while exercising. They're supposed to strap them onto infants and toddlers, who are essentially at zero risk for spreading the Wuhan virus, and they aren't ever supposed to complain about dental problems, headaches, or dizziness while mask-wearing — because every good COVID Karen knows masks are harmless.

This is our world in 2020. Ironically, not even the experts can keep pro-lockdown, pro-mask fanatics from harassing and endangering others. If you want to prevent this reality from becoming permanent, stand up to the bullies and stand firm on the science — including voting out politicians who've abandoned science and recalling those who aren't up for re-election in November.

Georgi is a Senior Contributor at The Federalist, host of The 180 Cast, and coauthor of Clocking Out Early: The Ultimate Guide to Early Retirement.