26 May Speak Your Vues

MINYANIM 

Dear Editor: I have seen certain Shuls reopening with a questionnaire of if you have antibodies you can join if not one should stay home. Isn’t that punishing all those that stayed in quarantine and protected themselves from the virus? Does that mean Camps will only accept those that were already infected with virus? Why penalize those who followed the rules? 

BC 

Editor’s Note: You have any other ideas? How can we protect the public so that we don’t get a re-occurrence? 

MINYANIM 

Dear Editor: In My Humble Opinion Dear Community Rabbanim and Leaders: I am no infectious disease physician and nor am I a posek, but I am the son of a Covid 19 victim, and I think I have the right to an opinion. Let me preface by saying that we don’t know for sure how my dad contracted Covid 19, but he died from it 3 weeks ago and we never will know how. His death is a cautionary tale. I read and heard that many well meaning community Rabbanim and leaders are advocating for the restarting tefillah besibur with “block” minyanim. As a Covid family survivor I am begging you, please wait. Believe me the pain and anguish of not being able to say kaddish for my father far outweighs your need to restart a minyan to satisfy bal habbbatim who are beseeching you to allow them to do so. But it’s misguided and potentially very dangerous to do this. While the intention is to keep to small groups separate and within prescribed limitations, the temptation to move a little closer, or to just allow one more person to join or even to allow a friend from the next street to join because his block can’t accommodate a minyan, is just to great to allow the community to risk more korbanot. I heard of a minyan in the center of a cul de sac with chairs set up around the cul de sac. This is not what the well meaning Rabbanim are advocating. Even the most ardent supporters of block minyanim state that “each family must remain on their property.” This is the problem. Give into small minyanim and there will unfortunately be those, also well meaning, who will stretch the heter even a little to meet a need. We build a geder around many things in our lives to protect ourselves from our own temptations. Let’s build a geder around ourselves to protect ourselves and our families. That geder should be a unified community that waits until it’s clearly safe to restart. Even one tragedy from this well meaning but wrong decision is one too many. 

Your neighbor, M B 

Editor’s Note: What will you wait for? A Vaccine? Zero deaths? I know it is painful but the world was created that we move on from tragedy! 

MAYOR NAZI 

Dear Editor: I hate to seem like I’m sticking up for de Blasio in any way, but not all anti-Semites are Nazis. It was unacceptable and bigoted of him to single out the Jewish community, especially considering that during his term there has been a rise in anti-Semitic violence. But it is not appropriate to call him a Nazi. 

A Flatbush resident 

Editor’s Note:Is he doing anything different than the Nazis by singling out Jewis communities and targeting Shuls? 

BE KIND 

Dear Editor: Just a thought… As We are trying to figure out how to ease back in to a new normal, please keep in mind no one has ever done this before, so please remember: Some people don’t agree with businesses opening…. that’s okay. Be kind. Some people are still planning to stay home…. that’s okay. Be kind. Some are still scared of getting the virus and a second wave happening…. that’s okay. Be kind. Some are sighing with relief to go back to work knowing they may not lose their business or their homes….that’s okay. Be kind. Some are thankful they can finally have that surgery they have put off….that’s okay. Be kind. Some will be able to attend interviews after weeks without a job…. that’s okay. Be kind. Some will wear masks for weeks.. maybe even months….that’s okay. Be kind. Some people will rush out to get their hair or nails done…. that’s okay. Be kind. The point is, everyone has different viewpoints/ feelings and that’s okay. Be kind. We each have a different story. If you need to stay home, stay home. But be kind . If you need to go out, just respect others when in public and be kind! Don’t judge fellow humans for what they do or don’t do…. you don’t know their story. We all are in a different mental state than we were months ago. So remember, be kind. 

KL 

Editor’s Note:This is the KIND of letter I like to get! 

ANTI VAXX 

Dear Editor: I find it strange that there was a letter from an anti-vaxxer criticizing a vaccine that is still in development and not even available yet! 

YH 

Editor’s Note: Eizehu chacham?

LIBERAL BIAS 

Dear Editor: A piece of research has been presented by The “Data For Progress and the Justice Collaborative Institute” which shows that over 50% of Republican voters are in favor of a bill proposed by Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (a member of AOC’s “The Squad”) which would give every American a monthly “Universal Basic Income” check of $2,000.00 while the pandemic is ongoing. Then it would provide every American with a monthly “Universal Basic Income” check of $1,000.00 for an additional year. For over forty years, I have had to listen to conservatives and Republicans rant and drone on and on about how we should never add to the national debt and the federal budget deficit and why we should cut and reduce spending on Social Security to demonstrate that we have “fiscal responsibility.” And now, all of a sudden, they want to ride the big, bad federal government “gravy train”. I thought that you all believed in “limited government?” I thought you believed that the federal government is incompetent and wasteful? I thought you believed that social programs really don’t help anyone, and that they make people “dependent” upon “government hand-outs?” So now, after listening to your coldhearted, “Survival-of-the-Fittest” Social Darwinist ideology and propaganda for forty years, I find out that you not only are a bunch of HYPOCRITES and POSERS, but that you have turned into “CRAZY SOCIALISTS.” 

Sincerely, S B E 

Editor’s Note: Again are you on a different planet? Don’t you see that there is a pandemic? Your Liberal Government is stopping people from working. What else do you expect??

SPECIAL SEGULAH 

Dear Editor: With many of us searching for ways to grow, there is a wonderful program on the computer both easy and highly valuable. Some of us have heard about the Segula to learn from the sefer Zera Shimshon. A noted sage and giant, both in all areas of Shas and Kabbalah, he wrote seforim and gave this gift to Klal Yisroel. Rav Nachmani promised specific blessings for all who will learn and review his writings. There are wonderful resources available to one and all. Thousands of people in recent years have experienced remarkable and irrefutable miracles after learning this Torah. Rabbi Kahn delivers a fascinating and clear shiur on YouTube, with a new class uploaded weekly. Its delivered with passion and excitement, has all background info provided, and every point thoroughly explained. For those who don’t own the sefer, the full text is provided, and accessed by clicking below the video screen on “more” (new tab). Rabbi Akilov hosts a captivating shiur on Zera Shimshon based on the upcoming parsha, with an engaging discussion on a specific given piece, which also includes stories, insights and more. Similarly, complex points are fully developed, and advanced high level torah is clarified and presented for all to understand and appreciate. Additional shiurim originally posted previously are available too by searching ‘Parshas—’ Several editions of Zera Shimshon have been published in english and provide an amazing and uplifting boost for the Shabbos table. For those who wish, there is a phone number with ‘fresh’ classes -in many languages- given by excellent maggidei shiurim. Note, this is a wonderful option for anyone without internet access who can take advantage of the Segula. From less advanced to scholars, even a lonely friend, theres really something for everyone to appreciate. 

A delightful Shavuos to one and all. 

Editor’s Note: That is great but learning any Torah is a segulah as the Gemara says that Torah is magna and matzla it is a protector and a saver. 

ROLLING CONCERTS REVISITED 

Dear Editor: I am all for cheering people up in these difficult times, but the rolling concerts gave me a raging migraine, and I believe it to be a chillul Hashem to blast music out of a vehicle. (Imagine how you would feel about non-Jews blasting their music.) 

Headache in Flatbush 

Editor’s Note: What is wrong if it is done once in a while . I have at my corner people blasting music all the time while waiting for a light at least this was one day only. 

ERROR CORRECTION 

Dear Editor: I’m sure the following was an innocent error. Though it is an error that can ignite more unnecessary panic in people. One picture showed a young bochur named Moshe Just. He sadly got killed by a car not from the virus. May his neshama have an Aliyah and his family and friends a Nechama. Pls correct the error… 

Thank you F. S 

Editor’s Note: Thanks for bringing it to our attention and this letter will serve as a correction. 

TREATMENT FOR CORONA 

Dear Editor: In HBO’s recent adaptation of the Philip Roth novel “The Plot Against America,” American Jews are coerced by President Charles Lindbergh to move to rural parts of the country so they will become “Americanized” and shed their Jewish ways. In real life, however, it was President Franklin D. Roosevelt who wanted to do just that. In the novel and television series, Lindbergh is elected president in 1940 on a platform of keeping America out of Europe’s war. But his agenda soon expands beyond isolationism. The fictional Lindbergh administration regards cultural and religious differences —especially Jewish ones— as undesirable, even dangerous. Jewish teenagers are enticed by the “Office of American Absorption” to spend their summers on farms in the midwest. Sandy, the elder brother of the narrator, 9 year-old Philip Roth, returns from his months in Kentucky shorn of his Newark (read: Jewish) mannerisms and attitudes. Then the “Absorption” office comes up with another scheme: large East coast companies are compelled to transfer their Jewish employees to cities in the south and west that have few Jewish residents. Phillip’s father quits his job in order to keep their family from being relocated. Franklin D. Roosevelt was, in real life, a vocal advocate of similar social engineering. During his campaign as the Democrats’ vice presidential candidate in 1920, FDR told an interviewer from The Brooklyn Eagle that “the foreign elements” had “crowded into one district and they have brought congestion and racial prejudices to our large cities.” The result, Roosevelt asserted, “is that they do not easily conform to the manners and the customs and the requirements of their new home.” Population resettlement was the answer, according to FDR. “If we had the greater part of the foreign population of the City of New York distributed to different localities upstate we should have a far better condition,” he told the interviewer. Roosevelt returned to the problem of immigrant assimilation in a column he wrote for a Georgia newspaper, the Macon Daily Telegraph, on April 21, 1925. “[F]or a good many years to come European immigration should remain greatly restricted,” the future president wrote. “We have, unfortunately, a great many thousand foreigners who got in here and who must be digested. For fifty years the United States ate a meal altogether too large—much of the food was digestible, but some of it was almost poisonous.” He added: “The United States must, for a short time at least, stop eating, and when it resumes should confine itself to the most readily assimilable foodstuffs.” Long after becoming president, FDR continued to view immigrants, and especially Jewish immigrants, as problematic and in need of dispersal. At a private White House luncheon on May 22, 1943, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill discussed their plans for the postwar world. The status of the Jews came up in the conversation. FDR sympathetically cited a plan that his senior adviser on population issues, Isaiah Bowman, had concocted for dealing with the Jews. Vice President Henry Wallace, who was present, wrote in his diary that Roosevelt told Churchill “the best way to settle the Jewish question” was “to spread the Jews thin all over the world.” Wallace continued: “The president said he had tried this out in [Meriwether] County, Georgia and at Hyde Park on the basis of adding four or five Jewish families at each place. He claimed that the local population would have no objection if there were no more than that.” The Jews were not the only immigrants whom President Roosevelt thought should be “spread thin.” He was also deeply concerned about what he saw as the inability of Asians to become fully American. “Japanese immigrants are not capable of assimilation into the American population,” he wrote in that Georgia newspaper in 1925.” Anyone who has traveled in the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results.” At a press conference on November 21, 1944, FDR was asked by a reporter whether the 130,000 Japanese-Americans whom he had put in detention camps would be permitted to return their homes when the war ended. “A good deal of progress has been made in scattering [Japanese-origin citizens] through the country, and that is going on almost every day,” Roosevelt replied. In language almost identical to that which he used when discussing the Jews, he said: “[I]n the Hudson River Valley or in western Georgia which we all know, in one of those countries, probably half a dozen or a dozen families could be scattered around on the farms and worked into the community. . . . And they wouldn’t—what’s my favorite word?—discombobulate the existing population of those particular countries very much.” In “The Plot Against America,” it is Franklin Roosevelt, as leader of the opposition, who eventually saves America from Lindbergh’s creeping fascism. It makes for entertaining television, but it’s fiction. Mark Twain famously remarked that “truth is stranger than fiction.” In this case, the truth of what the liberal FDR had in mind for Jews as strange, if not stranger, than what the reactionary Lindbergh carried out in Phillip Roth’s fiction. 

RM 

Editor’s Note: Always nice to read about History. Let us hope it does not repeat

BACK ISSUES 

Dear Editor: Hi I’d like to know how to get ( purchase ) back issues of you newspaper- I would like the issues from when you started remembering Covid19 victimsas I’d like to keep these issues in order never to forget- I have may 6 and may 13 issues- accidentally the others from April got thrown out- you did such an incredible chesed by publishing these pictures and giving faces to the names of these karbanos and it’s important that after we resume our “new normal” we never forget what happened and who was lost in our rush to just get back to our lives ( my husband Is a frontline physician for all these weeks and I feel incumbent on us never to forget- may this be a tremendous zchus for you all. 

CS 

Editor’s Note: I don’t know if we have any left but you can download all back issues from our website. Thanks for the Chizzuk.

ANOTHER ERROR CORRECTION 

Dear Editor: As a resident of Maale Adumim, Israel and a neighbor of Rabbi Nachum Rabinovitch, ztz”l, I was pleased to see that Jewish Vues reported on the petira of this gadol last week (a friends from the 5 Towns kindly sent me a photo of the article). However, I was very unhappy to see that it was reported on the “Remembering COVID-19 Victims” page. Rav Rabinovitch was definitely NOT a victim of the virus – he had been in poor health for years and had a stroke over Pesach from which he never recovered. This could easily have been checked with any member of his family or one of his thousands of talmidim around the world. There is no reason to assume that if a gadol dies these days, it is necessarily from the coronavirus. 

Maale Adumim resident 

Editor’s Note: Thanks for bringing it to our attention and this letter will serve as a correction.

GREAT KIDDUSH HASHEM 

Dear Editor: Let me tell you an absolutely beautiful Corona story. There is a fellow in Toronto who asked Rav Shlomo Miller if he can make a porch minyan, and Rav Shlomo paskened for him that there was no problem with it. And so, he had a minyan every day on his porch and in his neighbor’s porch; together they had a minyan, and that’s what they did every day from Pesach and on. Well, on Lag Ba’omer at night, at 9:00 at night, they decided they wanted to have a little bit of a kumzits. But before they played music at 9:00 at night, the father decided he wanted to ask two of the elderly women who lived near them, Jewish women, but completely not religious. And he knocked on one’s door and he says to her, “I don’t know if you know who I am..” and she cuts him off and she says, “Oh, I know very well who you are! You’re the group that I pray with every morning.” “Pray with?” She says, “Yes. Ever since you’ve started praying on your porch, I lay in bed and I pray with you. It’s been decades, but it’s so beautiful. And not only that, but I called up my son and I said to him, ‘You find your tallit and your tefillin and you pray as well. These people are praying, even in the snow (in Toronto it snowed after Pesach) if they can pray, then you need to pray as well.’” And of course, she was more than happy to allow them to play music and to sing. 

RCS 

Editor’s Note: Nice to see some positivity and tolerance in today’s day and age where everyone is quick to shut down minyanim and even snitch on people with Minyanim!

RABBINICAL GUIDANCE 

Dear Editor: In my neighborhood in Flatbush i have heard some shuls and outside minyanim have opened. Last Shabbos I saw some men with talisim on the streets in the morning. Where are they going? On Fri. Dr. Stuart Ditcheck clearly said we are not ready for this. Yes, I know he is not a posek. He was the first to call for the closing of shuls many weeks ago and everyone myself included thuoght that was very extreme. And yet it happened. Backyards in Flatbush are clearly not large enough to accommodate many people with social distancing in placle. Who are the priveleged few who get to take part in these minyanim? Is it done by lottery? In Lakewood and the Five Towns the Rabbanim have been coming out with statements regulating the situation. Is it here every man for himself here? That is unfortunate if that is the case. We clearly need to hear from our manhigim 

Seeking guidance in Flatbush 

Editor’s Note: Speak to your Rov! Unless your Rov resigned which then you know his opinion anyways! The Rabbonim are not posting in public as there is the fear that they will be blasted over Social Media. Speak to your Rov he will guide you with out the fan fare of public announcements! It is not one shoe that fiys all here!. 

FEAR MONGERING 

Dear Editor: I am so sick of all websites fear mongering. The reason we are still in lockdown is because of children being infected with Kawasaki which Cuomo is convinced he will find more cases. These cases are part of the Norm. NYS had only 130 cases comeon that is the reason to shut camps and small businesses? 

CBS 

Editor’s Note: That’s what a Liberal is good for more Government to think of ideas how to keep small business owners out of business. More executive orders. Look at all republican States they seem to be doing fine.