11 Mar Speak Your Vues
Corona Virus
Dear Editor:
Lets think protection instead of panic
Friends
Yesterday , it was reported that three yeshiva’s in Westchester have been closed due to a parent in the areas being confirmed as having contracted the coronavirus. While it is understandable to be concerned, it is important to be armed with the facts. The JCCMP is committed to ensuring the safety and health of our community at all times and would like to share the following resources and guidance provided by local and federal public health authorities to provide valuable information and context to the current coronavirus situation.
Currently, it is not being recommended to limit travel or gatherings within NYC. However, as with the case of any communicable disease, if you are not feeling well you should stay home and limit your contact with others. Additionally, shuls and yeshivas should support the guidance by:
1. Ensuring the availability of soap and/or alcohol based gel and disposable hand towels
2. Posting hand washing poster in bathrooms and by sinks
3. Provide tissues and refuse containers in which to dispose them
3. Encourage students and members to stay home if they are not feeling well
It should be noted that this is an ongoing situation and guidance from these sources may be updated or enhanced in the future.
Coronavirus resources:
NYS DOHMH Fact Sheet:
https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/
doh/downloads/pdf/imm/novel- coronavirus-wuhan-factsheet.
DOHMH Handwashing Poster:
https://media.wnyc.org/media/
wp-images/news/files/2009/11/ dohmh-jewishhandwash-adult.jpg
CDC Coronavirus webpage:
https://www.cdc.gov/
coronavirus/2019-ncov/index. html
CDC Guidance for schools:
https://www.cdc.gov/
coronavirus/2019-ncov/ specific-groups/guidance-for- schools.html
Dr J
Editor’s Note: Is it containable? We can’t stop the flu so why not let people get the virus and as long as people are not immune deficient they will come out of it.
Dear Editor:
I am already getting emails from conservative-Republican candidates calling all Democrats “socialists” when I don’t think that any of the national-level Democrats are truly “socialists” at all. None. To me, they are all “liberals” and “progressives” who are NOT advocating for the abolition of our market-based capitalist economic system and who simply want to develop a MORE “HUMANE” capitalism which has more new federal government social programs to help people. They want the USA to be more like our allies in Canada, western Europe, and Scandinavia. I don’t consider these countries to be “socialist.” These countries don’t consider themselves to be “socialist.” It is mostly USA conservative-Republicans who do. Why? Because it is an easy, but less than honest, WEAPON to use against Democrats.
What many Americans don’t seem to understand and “get” is that simply supporting federal goverment social programs such as Social Security and Medicare that help people do NOT make one a “socialist.” If that were the case, then Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon were “socialists” because Ike signed “Social Security Disability” into existence and Nixon signed “Supplemental Security Income” (SSI) into existence.
Sincerely,
Stewart B. E
Editor’s Note: Happy Purim to you too.
Dear Editor:
It’s bad enough that an annual Belgian carnival float mocks Jews by depicting them with huge “Jewish noses.” But now a prominent historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is also perpetuating the myth that there is such a thing as a “Jewish nose.”
In a tweet on December 17, 2019, Dr. Rebecca Erbelding, a staff historian at the museum who frequently represents it at events around the country, wrote: “At a talk today, asked about my personal background. I confessed that I’m not Jewish, but with a Hebrew first name, German last name, and my nose and hair, I ‘pass’.”
Historian Sharonna Pearl wrote an essay in Tablet last year titled “The Myth of the Jewish Nose: It’s Not Really a Thing.” Pearl was just stating the obvious. Yet here we have a staff historian at the Holocaust Museum—of all places—who thinks that it IS a thing.
The idea that there is a distinctive “Jewish nose” dates back to the 12th century CE, when medieval anti-Semites introduced it as a way of singling out Jews for contempt.
The nose became “a physical symbol of otherness for Jews,” as Prof. Roy Goldblatt has put it.
Nazi Germany’s propaganda machine made ample use of the “Jewish nose” stereotype. A notorious Nazi film produced in 1940, called “The Eternal Jew,” purporting to expose the “real” Jew, focused on “Jewish faces,” zooming in on Jews’ noses to make them seem unattractive.
Similar images appeared throughout the Nazis’ news media, cultural publications, and children’s books. You would think that a historian at the Holocaust Museum would be informed and sensitive about the danger of echoing such stereotypes.
In recent years, the “Jewish nose” lie has been heard from various other quarters. In 1999, for example, Arizona state legislator Barbara Blewster told a colleague, “You can’t be Jewish. You don’t have a big hooked nose.” Blewster was compelled to publicly apologize, but she continued to insist, “I have no prejudice at all. I admire the Jews.” Sure she does.
The recently resigned prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamed, has repeatedly referred to “hook-nosed Jews.” The website of Belgium’s Ghent University until recently included a sign-language video showing a hooked nose as the translation for the word “Jewish.” And a Jewish woman in Sweden recently reported that when she went to a Stockholm police station to have her photo taken for an ID card, an antisemitic officer digitally altered her image to drastically enlarge her nose.
Women in particular have suffered from the “Jewish nose” stereotype that Erbelding is perpetuating. Rachel Jacoby Rosenfield and Maital Friedman of the Shalom Hartman Institute have written about how the “Jewish nose” and related stereotypes have been used to intimidate Jewish women into altering their appearances. “These negative stereotypes have impacted our Jewish psyche and spawned a self-consciousness and communal shame about ‘Jewish looks’,” they point out.
Some see a direction connection between the Jewish nose stereotype and violence against Jews. In a recent essay, Jonathan Kaplan, of the University of Technology-Sydney, noted that Pittsburgh synagogue gunman Robert Bowers invoked classic anti-Jewish stereotypes in his online ravings. “How we speak about and depict others in the media and social discourse perpetuates long-held stereotypes and ultimately emboldens hate-filled individuals,” Kaplan warned.
Sadly, Rebecca Erbelding’s remark about “Jewish noses” is just the latest in a series of extremist statements that she has made in recent years, forcing the U.S. Holocaust Museum to publicly apologize or distance itself from her words.
One such episode occurred when Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez compared U.S. border detention facilities to Nazi-era “concentration camps.” Erbelding sent out tweets and re-tweets sympathizing with Cortez’s position. She even gave “a Geppetto checkmark” to Cortez’s defense of her declaration. (That’s shorthand for saying that a statement is “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”) The Holocaust Museum then issued a statement saying that Erbelding’s position “does not reflect the position of the Museum.”
Erbelding has publicly condemned the United States for destroying Syria’s chemical weapons factories. She has promoted donations to the American Friends Service Committee despite that group’s comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany. She has even claimed it would have been wrong for the U.S. to bomb Auschwitz, because it “would have killed a lot of people.” That last one is so bizarre, it might sound as if she couldn’t have been serious—but she was.
Rebecca Erbelding needs to apologize for perpetuating the deeply offensive stereotype about “Jewish noses.” But beyond that, one might ask: how many more times will the U.S. Holocaust Museum find itself embarrassed by Erbelding’s extremist antics, before it concludes that she is more of a liability than an asset?
America’s taxpayers pay Erbelding’s salary and finance the Holocaust Museum. They have a right to expect that federal government institutions will not have a hand in the irresponsible parroting of anti-Jewish stereotypes.
MP
Editor’s Note: We have an up hill battle here.
Dear Editor:
People shouldn’t be panicking about COVID-19, because panicking doesn’t help.
RS
Editor’s Note: Since when do people only do what helps?
Dear Editor:
On the 2020 U.S. Census form, question #9 (What is Person 1’s race?) has checkboxes for race, and then a 16-box field for origins.
Would the origin be Gan Eden?
DBT
Editor’s Note: That would depend who the person is.
Dear Editor:
I amMaking a Wedding in a week (in monsey), do you think I’ll have to delay?
Editor’s Note: why are you worried the Chosson or the Kalla are sick?
Dear Editor:
I was hesitant at first to vote in the WZO election, after all, us Ehrlicher Yidden have been denouncing Zionism as a movement that’s anti Torah since it began & I still do. The stakes are high & I have decided that If Rav Shmuel Kaminetzky strongly encourages us to vote & that Rav Gershon Edelstein has concurred then this is what we should be doing. My wife & I both voted for the Eretz Hakodesh slate & I feel very comfortable following the opinion of the most senior manhigei Hador. March 11 is the last day to vote so the time to decide is now! You’ll be getting busy with the Mitzvos of Purim & will forget to cast your vote for the future of Klal Yisroel in Eretz Yisroel. If you plan on voting then please don’t delay to the last minute. I have no affiliation with Eretz Hakodesh.
HM
Editor’s Note: Even if the “Eretz Hakodesh” slate gets its best case scenario outcome, it’ll control only 50 out of 150 US slots in in the WZO Congress. And the 150 American slots is out of 750 WZO Congress seats. So the best win for E.HK. is still way too small for them to do anything positive.
Dear Editor:
My son who’s going to have his bar mitzvah in a few months is upset because he wanted us to get these fancy invitations to use that cost a fortune. And I said there’s nothing wrong with regular, standard invitations. He won’t hear of it, and he said all his classmates have fancy ones and he’s going to look like a nebach..
What would you do? Should I just go ahead and get the fancy ones so he feels better?
CS
Editor’s Note: Do you think in twenty years from now he will remember this?
Dear Editor:
So if your democrat, (and didn’t yet have a primary) you get to choose between someone who forgets what he wants to do and someone whom you wish would forget what he wants to do
KY
Editor’s Note: I guess Trump is a better alternative maybe vote for him in the Democratic Primaries.
Dear Editor:
A new study in Nature shows that while children are unlikely to develop severe symptoms when infected by the coronavirus, they are no less likely to be infected if they are exposed.
As the Chareidi community has B.H. an unusually high proportion of children — young children put their fingers in their mouth and touch everything — this presents a serious issue with regards to containing the virus.
Italy had only 12 cases two weeks ago and now a third of the country is on lockdown.
I’m surprised at the apathetic approach by so many. This virus is estimated to kill about 0.5% of those infected and 1% of those who come down with symptoms. That is no flu.
We should not be going about our Purim seudos, Simchas etc, gatherings like normal.
DD
Editor’s Note: Shomer Pesaim Hashem.
Dear Editor:
I don’t get the big deal about coronavirus. Considering that the common flu has not only a higher infection rate but also a larger mortality percentage so what’s the reason for all of the panic wrought by this virus? Why are airlines in danger of bankruptcy, stock markets in imminent collapse, and a general atmosphere of catastrophe and apocalypse prevalent? In short, why the ruckus about coronavirus?
FB
Editor’s Note: Listen the media needs to make a living too. Especially die to the fact that trump opposes them this is their way of getting back at him.