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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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The Three Musketeers at the Kotel

Today's Blood Libel

By Vic Rosenthal

1913 was not so long ago. Two of my grandparents, whom I came to know very well somewhat later, were young then. They emigrated from the Jewish Pale of Settlement in Ukraine the previous year, coming to New York to start a life that they hoped would be free from antisemitic persecution.

That was the year of the trial of Menachem Mendel Beilis in Kiev, not too far from where my grandparents had lived.

Beilis, as you probably know, was a Jew that was chosen as a scapegoat by antisemitic officials who wanted to absolve the incompetent government of Tsar Nicholas II of guilt for economic and social problems by stirring up hatred for the Jews. They took advantage of the murder of a 13-year-old boy, Andrei Yushchinsky, to accuse Beilis of having snatched the boy and drained his blood for ritual purposes. The trial attracted international interest – after all, it was the 20^th century already! – and featured the testimony of antisemitic "authorities" versus well-known rabbis and Talmud scholars, who understood that all Am Yisrael were in the dock, not just the unfortunate Beilis.

A Russian police detective, Nikolay Krasovsky (who ultimately lost his job as a result), discovered the real murderers of Yushchinsky, a gang led by a woman named Vera Cheberiak, whose son was a friend of Yushchinsky and had told him about his mother's criminal activities. Beilis had a good alibi, having been seen by others at work at the time of the murder. The coroner's report showed that the victim's blood had not been drained. Nevertheless, the trial was held in October-November of 1913.

Although the jury had been specially selected for antisemitism, the prosecution and its witnesses bungled their case and were made fools of on numerous occasions. One "expert" on Judaism, a Catholic priest named Justinas Pranaitis, who had written an antisemitic book on the Talmud, was asked "Who was Baba Basra and what was her activity?" He responded that he didn't know who she was, which evoked laughter from the Jews in the courtroom, who knew that Bava Batra was a section of the Talmud.

Ultimately – after two years of pre-trial imprisonment and a month-long trial – Beilis was acquitted. However, the divided jury compromised by rendering the verdict that there had indeed been a bloody ritual murder committed, but some other Jew must have done it.

Why am I telling this story? Because, in the past one hundred years, nothing has changed except for the defendant.

Accusations of ritual murder have been made against Jews since medieval times, and possibly even before. They are still current in Arab countries, and even present-day Russia. The Tsarist officials who orchestrated the scapegoating of Beilis did so to inflame the masses against the Jews of the Russian empire. They wanted to blame them for their failures, and also to discredit the various progressive and leftist movements by association with the Jews. They hoped to incite a wave of pogroms which would bleed off the energy of the anti-monarchic forces by directing them at a safe target.

Today most Jewish communities outside of the US and Israel have dwindled to near-insignificance, and while there is plenty of antisemitic agitation, it comes from marginal players. It does not have the official sanction that Russian Jew-hatred did in 1912. But at the same time, a new scapegoat has been chosen, and this one is being accused by official and quasi-official organs of the international community of crimes worse than ritual murder, of all-encompassing crimes against humanity. The accused is no longer a Jewish individual but the Jewish state; however similarities between the prosecutions abound.

Charges are trumped up and even the crimes themselves are sometimes tailored to this specific defendant. For example, in a recent Human Rights Watch report, Israel is accused of "the crime of apartheid" despite the fact that nothing Israel has done in her conflict with the Palestinians bears the slightest resemblance to actual apartheid. Israel is regularly accused of "settler colonialism," although there is no colonizing metropole (mother country) to be found, and Jews have lived in the Land of Israel since biblical times. Sometimes there are echoes of the original blood libel, as when the IDF is falsely accused of deliberately targeting Palestinian children.

"Witnesses" and "experts," often with similar qualifications to those of Justinas Pranaitis, are found to testify against her. Real evidence of actual wrongdoing can't be found, but that is unimportant because the purpose of the trial is not to determine guilt, which is already assumed by the media and international organizations that are passing judgment in the defendant, but to turn public opinion against her. But why do they want to?

In the Arab and wider Muslim world, deflecting the anger of a dissatisfied and restive populace away from their kleptocratic rulers onto Israel and the Jewish people has been a tried and tested policy for decades, indeed since 1948. The need to "resist" non-existent Israeli expansionism, for example, has sustained Hezbollah and provided cover for the true expansionism and aggression of Iran.

European motivations to convict Israel of crimes against humanity are manifold. Wanting good relations with the resource-rich third world that they formerly colonized and exploited, by attacking Israel they at the same time appease the corrupt leaders that control those resources and assuage their guilt for their behavior during the colonial period. By accusing the Jews of Israel of behaving like Nazis, they can absolve themselves for their almost universal history of cooperation with the real, genocidal Nazis. By displaying their anti-Israel bona fides, politicians vie for the support of their growing populations of Middle-Eastern origin, whom they invited in to compensate for the steep demographic decline of their native populations.

America has been less directly involved in the prosecution until recently; but lately various organizations have developed which are dedicated to the demonization and delegitimization of Israel. They have received funding from a collection of sources, including Iran, Arab countries, Turkey, and international leftist charities such as the Open Society Foundations of George Soros, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and others. They are working at making "Israel" synonymous with racism and oppression of minorities, which is the hottest of hot-button issues in the US today. There is also a growing Arab and Muslim population in the US, which has contributed both money and political clout to the anti-Israel movement.

In the days of Beilis, much of Western intelligentsia and media were horrified by the atavistic hatred cynically deployed by the elites of the Russian Empire. But today the academic world and media were the first sectors to be suborned by those who wish to criminalize the Jewish state, and now they are in the forefront of the campaign against her. Literally billions of petrodollars went into creating whole academic departments which are little more than factories for anti-Israel propaganda.

Above all, this worldwide epidemic of misoziony – irrational, extreme, obsessive hatred of Israel – fell on fertile ground. It's almost as if Jew-hatred, tabooed and bottled up since the Holocaust, could not be denied, and had to burst out in some form, like the creature in the movie Alien. The blood libel that ensnared numerous Jewish victims throughout the centuries is apparently alive and well.

{Reposted from the author's blog}

Mendel Beilis was a father of five and a clerk and dispatcher in a brick factory that was run for charitable purposes owned by the Zaitsev family who were beet sugar magnates. All the factory profits went to support a hospital for the indigent of the city of all faiths. The saga began in March of 1911 when the mutilated body of 13-year-old Andrei Yushchinsky was discovered in a cave not far from the Jewish-owned brick factory on the outskirts of Kiev, where the 39-year-old Beilis worked. Beilis was arrested in July of 1911 in the middle of the night and they also took his son who was 8 years old. They put him in the secret police prison and kept him and the boy for a few days and then let the boy go but held Beilis for over two years in the horrible conditions. Beilis told a Yiddish newspaper that he considered suicide but he remembered the Torah injunction to be a hero and resist the evil inclination. If the authorities would find him dead, he thought, it would be a proof of his personal guilt, and would substantiate the accusation of the blood libel against the Jews at-large.

Why does COVID make people so sick, so quickly?

Why does COVID make people so sick, so quickly? Israeli geneticist has an answer

SARS-CoV-2 uses a three-pronged approach to keep cells from recruiting immune system to fend off the attack until it may be too late, says Weizmann Institute researcher

By NATHAN JEFFAY

COVID-19 is so dangerous because the virus uses a three-pronged attack mechanism to stop cells from quickly triggering the immune system, Israeli scientists have concluded.

They offer a portrait of how exactly the SARS-CoV-2 virus behaves once inside human cells — they say it's the most detailed to date — in an article published on Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.

After hundreds of hours in their labs monitoring the virus interacting with cells, they have concluded that the virus mounts a hostile takeover on the cell's protein-making machinery, and stops it from making proteins needed to galvanize the immune system.

"Our research helps to explain why this virus causes such serious disease suddenly," lead author Noam Stern-Ginossar, of the Weizmann Institute's Molecular Genetics Department, told The Times of Israel. "We have seen close up that it basically harms the ability of cells to send the necessary early signals to the immune system.

"This is why, with COVID-19, everything in terms of immune response can be badly postponed, and by the time the body feels SARS-CoV-2 there can be huge amounts of the virus."

SARS-CoV-2 uses a trio of methods to keep infected cells quiet and stop them from sending messages to the immune system, and can succeed in subduing this communication ability for days, Stern-Ginossar said.

She suggested that this explains why COVID-19 patients often feel relatively well for days after infection, and then experience a sudden and drastic deterioration. By the time cells overcome the subduing effect of the SARS-CoV-2 virus on their messaging ability, the virus has greatly multiplied.

All three of the virus' tactics result in it harming the ability of cells to produce proteins, which are needed to communicate with the immune system and can also themselves fight infection.

The first reduces the cell's capacity for translating genes into proteins. The second actively degrades the cell's messenger RNA, the molecules that carry instructions for making proteins from the DNA to the ribosomes. And the third prevents the export of messenger RNA from the cell's nucleus, where it is synthesized, to the cell's main chamber.

"The first of these processes was known, but the others were not," said Stern-Ginossar, suggesting that her research significantly advances the understanding of COVID-19 and could be a major help to drug companies developing therapeutics.

"We now understand on a molecular level why we're not mounting efficient anti-viral response, and knowing this may be able to better target therapeutics," she said.

Israel Guarantees Muslims' Freedom of Worship: Jews Banned from Temple Mount on Jerusalem Day

By David Israel

Following a Monday morning assessment of the situation in Jerusalem, Police Commissioner Yaakov Shabtai decided that in view of the sensitive situation, there would be no visits by Jews to the Temple Mount on Jerusalem Liberation Day.

It seems that everyone who spoke this week about the need to ban Jews from entering the Temple Mount, starting with UN Secretary-General António Guterres to Meretz MK Tamar Zandberg demanded that Israel protect the right to worship and in the name of the same right it must forbid the prayer of Jews at the most sacred place for Jews in the world.

Of course, the religious right sees this as a surrender to the wave of terror, the flames of which are fanned openly by Hamas. The terror group announced Sunday: "We are not just watching the events, but are generating and directing them."

The man behind that announcement was senior Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri, who runs from his shelter abroad the Hamas activities in Judea and Samaria. He incited the PA Arabs on Sunday night to injure soldiers and settlers.

In a demonstration in the heart of Ramallah, the Arabs called on their brothers in the Gaza Strip to join the battle for Jerusalem, and processions are planned on Monday evening at the centers of friction with the IDF in Judea and Samaria.

Therefore, many in Israel's establishment have suggested that the decision to ban Jews from ascending the Temple Mount is wise, in light of the fact that entry into the Temple Mount by Jews would increase the escalation in Jerusalem, create a dangerous and violent point of friction right outside Al-Aqsa mosque, and would put the police at very high risk.

It is possible that in the future the Israeli police would prohibit the banks from taking measures to prevent robberies because it might upset the robbers and endanger the cops. After all, the ultimate goal of the police is to keep all the policemen safe.

And so the day of the liberation of Jerusalem becomes the day of the surrender of the State of Israel to terrorism and Arab violence.

By the way, according to Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Leon, the source of violence are not the Arab residents of eastern Jerusalem but the Israeli Arabs who flock to the holy city en masse from the north of the country, which is dominated by the northern faction of the Muslim Brotherhood.

United States National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan spoke by phone with his Israeli counterpart Meir Ben Shabbat and expressed Washington's deep concerns about the situation in the holy city. A White House statement said Sullivan also stressed the United States' serious concerns about the possibility of Arab squatters being evicted from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. He encouraged the Israeli government to take appropriate measures to ensure calm during Jerusalem Day and promised that the administration would be involved in the coming days in efforts to maintain calm in Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court decided to postpone the hearing that was supposed to take place on Monday on an appeal by the same Arab squatters about their eviction from Jewish-owned homes in the Shimon Hatzadik neighborhood in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem.

In addition, the court imposed a delay in the execution of the eviction itself, after Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit asked for the postponement because he said he was considering joining the court process. "This procedure raises sensitivities in other respects," Mandelblit wrote in his motion to dismiss the eviction. "Therefore, the state seeks to submit in the presence of one party the opinions of professionals and various policy factors."

There you go. The cops will explain to the banks why the government supports the robbers. It's all good, they'll bring experts.

The White House also said that Sullivan and Ben Shabbat had condemned the launch of rockets and incendiary balloons from Gaza, and that's very satisfying because imagine if the White House had also demanded that Israel stop harassing the peaceful balloonists of Gaza.

Police officers clash with Arab rioters outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem Old City, May 09, 2021. / Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

Meanwhile, thousands of policemen and border guards were deployed across Jerusalem Sunday night following the riots and violent disturbances in recent days, and in expectation of Monday's Jerusalem Day celebrations.

The reinforcements were sent to the sensitive spots – the gates to the Old City through which Jews walk to the Western Wall, the support wall built by King Herod for the Temple Mount, where even in the days of that wicked king Jews were not forbidden to pray.

On Sunday evening, at the entrance to the Hebrew University, there was violent friction between Arab youths and Jewish students who were exiting the university gates. The students were attacked by the young Muslims with stones. Police were called to the scene and three of them were sprayed with pepper spray and lightly injured. The university administration instructed the students to stay inside the compound and lock its gates to keep them safe.

And so, by the way, freedom of study in the Israeli capital was also guaranteed.

With the end of Ramadan prayers on Sunday night, violent clashes began again on the Temple Mount. This was the third night in a row of clashes. According to police estimates, about 100,000 Muslim worshipers passed through the Temple Mount gates on Sunday. Police worked to disperse them in order to restore order at the site, repel the rioters and reduce the damage to the tens of thousands of worshipers who were present at and near the Temple Mount plaza.

The police are preparing, among other things, for the Flag Dance parade that will be held on Monday, and Jerusalem District Commander Superintendent Doron Turgeman decided that while Arabs are allowed to bring 100,000 Muslims to the Temple Mount, Jews will be allowed to include only 8 to 15 thousand in the procession of flags because more than that would surely upset the bank robbers.

The IDF takes into account that following the events in Jerusalem there may be a more significant escalation in Judea and Samaria, so it decided not to take chances. On Sunday, Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi decided to send in three more battalions, to bolster the defense on the seam-line between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Jerusalem Day flags parade, May 20, 2012. / Miriam Alster/Flash90

Monday's peak in the tensions in Jerusalem is expected to be between 4:00 and 9:00 PM in the mass flags parade. Given the charged situation, security and political elements have recommended canceling the traditional parade, which began about 30 years ago and which symbolizes the unification of Jerusalem. The same elements recommended that at least the parade's route be altered. Maybe run it in Tel Aviv? I hear it's very peaceful this time of year if you keep out of Arab Jaffa.

The flags parade will begin with a dance on stages set up on King George Street in downtown western Jerusalem, the safe part, and will continue with a march through several gates in the Old City that lead to the Western Wall, where the plaza will see a big rally that will be attended by public figures.

Among those calling for the cancellation of the flag parade was MK Esawi Frej (Meretz), who argued that "it only takes a small match to ignite a large fire. This match may be the approval of the settlers' demonstration at such a sensitive time, which may repeat the Meron disaster. I call on the police to be decisive and prevent it."

Note two main points in the words of Naftali Bennett's future partner in the unity government:

The procession, according to Frej, is a "settlers' demonstration," not a joyous procession of Israeli citizens commemorating the liberation of their eternal capital; and note that Frej did not call on the Arabs to exercise restraint and avoid lighting matches.

Meanwhile, Religious Zionism chairman MK Bezalel Smotrich issued a statement regarding the decision to ban Jews from the Temple Mount on Jerusalem Liberation Day:

"It seems like we insist on not learning from past mistakes. Surrendering to terrorism invites more and more harm to Jews. Terrorism must be cut down and defeated, we must not capitulate before it. Instead of preventing the movement of the victims of the attacks, the police should chase after the assailants. This is an unfortunate decision and I call on the police commissioner to reverse it."

Me too.

What's My Line? - LOST EPISODE CLIP! Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (Jan 24, 1954)

Here's the only snippet known to exist from the Jan 24, 1954 episode with Martin and Lewis, probably the single "most wanted" lost episode of WML (along with the Jul 31, 1955 episode with Ty Cobb. I think I'd vote for the 1951 show with Chico, or the Sept 25, 1955 episoe with Jackie Gleason in costume as Ralph Kramden!) This clip comes from the "WML at 25" special aired in 1975; the presumption over the years has been that the film of the full episode was damaged in the process of using it for the special, but we don't really know that to be the case. Unlike most of the 100 or so lost episodes, there's good reason to believe that this one will turn up one day, thanks to Jerry Lewis's known mania for self-documenting every aspect of his career. It wouldn't be at all surprising if he requested a copy of the show for his own archive. Unfortunately, even if this is the case, his materials were donated to the Library of Congress in 2015, and nothing gets out of the Library of Congress. But it would still be nice to know if it's there. . .

Moshe Dayan: Hero AND VILLAIN of Jerusalem Day

By Jeff Dunetz

Thursday evening, May 21 begins the annual day-long holiday of Yom Yerushalayim, which celebrates the reunification of Jerusalem during the Six-Day-War in 1967. Many people remember the picture of "hero" Moshe Dayan entering Jerusalem signaling the return of the "old city" of Jerusalem to the Jewish state. Moshe Dayan is recognized as the hero of the reunification of Jerusalem but left unspoken is the fact that he's also the villain.

Jerusalem became the capital city of the Jewish people in the time of King David. David conquered it and made it the seat of his monarchy in approximately 1000 B.C.E. After the Romans conquered the city in 70 C.E., the Jewish people mourned the loss of the city and the site of the Holy Temple in the city for the next nineteen hundred years.

After Israel's War of Independence in 1948, the Jewish State was control of the newer half of the Holy City. But on day three of the Six-Day-War Israeli forces were able to reunify their capital. Finally, after almost two millennia, the Jewish people were able to control the Temple Mount, the site of both of the Holy Temples… until Moshe Dayan took it upon himself to give control of the Temple Mount back to the Muslim Waqf under Jordanian control.

Made Defense Minister just before the start of the June 1967 War, Israel's quick victory in the war made Dayan an international hero. But if it were not for the progressive hubris of the man considered to be the hero of Six-Day-War, the Kotel (Wailing Wall or Western Wall) in Jerusalem, and the Temple Mount would not be as divisive of an issue between Israel and its neighbors that they are today.

Jews were denied access to the Holy Sites in the Old City Jerusalem since when Jordan gained control of the "Old City" during the 1948 war.

During the intervening 19 years, the Jordanians waged systematic destruction, desecration, and looting of Jewish sites. But 53 years ago the I.D.F. liberated the Old City of Jerusalem, and Jews were allowed to approach the Temple Mount.

Even if you cannot understand the Hebrew in the short video below, you can appreciate the joy, and reverence as Jews approached the Temple mount for the first time since 1948.

It should be noted that despite what commentators and the mainstream media will tell you, the Kotel (the Wailing Wall) is not the holiest site in Judaism—it is the retaining wall for the most sacred site in Judaism, the Temple Mount. The Kotel is the closest place to the holiest spot for Jews that Jews are allowed to pray. Thanks in part to Moshe Dayan, Jews are not permitted to pray atop the Temple Mount (Christians aren't allowed to pray either).

When Israel gained possession of the Temple compound during the Six-Day-War, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol wanted to create a multi-faith council to run the Temple Mount. The Muslim Mosque would not have been touched, but all faiths would be allowed up on top of the mount, and it would "belong" to all three religions.

Dayan didn't like that idea. He thought the Temple Mount should remain in Muslim possession. In his biography, Dayan clearly stated that he was worried that Jews would try to rebuild the Beit Hamikdash (the Jewish Temple), and that was the last thing he wanted.

Of course, there was no way a third Temple would be built—well built then. By Jewish tradition, it won't be built until the coming of the Moshiach (Messiah). And at that time it won't matter.

But that didn't stop Dayan. Like most progressives, he felt he knew better than anybody. He didn't consult the Prime Minister or the Knesset, nor did the Israeli people have a say.

Found By the Southern Wall of the Temple Mount-From Second Temple Inscribed, "To the Place of Trumpeting." The spot where the Priests blew the Shofar to announce the beginning and end of the Sabbath and Holidays.

Dayan took it upon himself, he "gave" control of the Temple Mount back to the Arabs because he wanted to make sure that there wouldn't be a third Temple. And there was nothing that Prime Minister Eshkol could do about it, after all, Moshe Dayan, was a war hero.

The Jewish people have lost possession of the Temple Mount three times since King David purchased the site 30 centuries ago. Only once was the site given away voluntarily. That was when Moshe Dayan gave it away 53 years ago. Moshe Dayan should go down in history as the man who gave away the Temple Mount, providing the Palestinians the opportunity to make the site of the Holy Temple an Issue:

………."It's true," [Knesset member Aryeh Eldad] said, "that the original sin was when the Jewish People, immediately after the Six Day War in 1967, ceded its hold on the Temple Mount in an unholy alliance between the Chief Rabbinate and Moshe Dayan – each side for its own reasons – but now the danger is that the Arab sovereignty on the Temple Mount will spill over to the Western Wall plaza, and from there to other places."

Then-Defense Minister Dayan, just days after Israel's liberation of the Old City, informed the Muslims running the Temple Mount that they could continue to run the mosques there – and later went further by preventing Jewish prayer all over the Mount.

"It was evident that if we did not prevent Jews from praying in what was now a mosque compound," Dayan later wrote, "matters would get out of hand and lead to a religious clash… As an added precaution, I told the chief of staff to order the chief army chaplain to remove the branch office he had established in the building which adjoins the mosque compound."

Since they control the Mount, the Muslim Waqf, "conducted illegal renovations on the Temple Mount and disposed of over 9,000 tons of dirt mixed with invaluable archaeological artifacts. Though Israeli antiquities law requires a salvage excavation before construction at archaeological sites, this illegal bulldozing destroyed innumerable artifacts: veritable treasures that would have provided a rare glimpse of the region's rich history." But the Waqf was trying to destroy any proof that there were Jewish Temples atop the mount.

A bronze coin bearing the face of Antiochus IV, the king whose edicts brought about the revolt of the Maccabees in 167 B.C.E. Discarded by the Muslim Waqf, found by the Temple Mount Sifting Project

Thankfully an organization called the Temple Mount Sifting Project has been going through the "dirt" for the past 20 years and has found incredible artifacts from both the first and second Temples.

The evening of May 21 until sunset the next day, Jews across the world will celebrate Yom Yerushalayim commemorating the day Jews once again had access to their holy sites in East Jerusalem. But Thanks to Moshe Dayan, the most sacred site in all of Judaism is off-limits. That is what Jews call a shanda (a shame).

Moshe Dayan hero and villain