21 Nov SPEAK YOUR VUES WITH THE VUES MASTER

CHANGE
Dear Vues Master:
I am sitting on a bus on the way to the rally in Washington
& though the white hair on my head & face attest to the
fact that I have been around for a very long time, & in
all that time I have been zoche to sit at the feet of the
Gedolei Hador. And yet ,this time I am at a complete loss
as to the purpose of this incredibly ill timed Kol Korei.
If the Moetzes had signed a Kol korei for people to go
& now upon seeing the released list of “inappropriate
“ speakers, would definitely be correct in issuing this
one not to participate. However they never did publicly
authorize this rally, so why come out now, at the 11th
hour. There are Gedolei Torah & Rosh Yeshivohs there,
along with many yeshivohs & thousands of Bnei Torah
already well on their way. What a “klop” to them.
Even more so, just on my bus alone, there are leaders
of many Kehillos & of yeshivohs, there was a minyan
& a Daf Yomi shiur in Bavli & Yerushalmi & almost
every passenger is sitting with his Daf, mishnayos,
or Chumash. It is for the most part a “torahadik “
atmosphere with people who gave up their entire day,
just to be “ישראל״ של בצערן מצטרף !The program is
totally inconsequential (there is no Kol isha)& no one
really even cares about it, but it’s to be here & cry out for
families the let & אחינו בני ישראל הנתונים בצרה ובשביה
of the hostages that are here, see that we are all here for
them. Instead of sitting & learning the last few hours ,
instead there is a free for all discussion where everyone
is commenting (& worse)on this Kol korei & the level
of bitul & ridicule is beyond the pale. How much
sincerity & mesiras nefesh is all lost because of the
חכמים תלמידי ביזו that is going on all over the world
at this time. And of course, it’s always Agudah that
bears the brunt of that ridicule. As a lifelong Agudist
who is very public about that fact, I am being besieged
by all my co passengers asking me to explain the
“timing” of this Kol korei, with tens of thousands of
ומצות תורה שומרי already either well on their way, or
already there. I have absolutely no words to respond to
their questions &/or their mockery. In addition, having
worked these last few weeks with Rabbi Hauer & others
to insure that there will be “religious context “ displayed,

so we won’t have to go through what we did the last time
around with the reform woman rabbi. It is supposed to
be just a political & entertainment venue, that while is
not “our” way, it would not violate any of our religious
beliefs. And nothing changed! While our Gedolim
need not my agreement, nor even my understanding,
when I am forced to witness such תורה ביזו from
our very own machane, it’s extremely disturbing &
disappointing. I hope that I will be proven wrong, but
I am afraid we just set back our Agudah efforts for
many years. This is being sent not out of anger C”V
but out of extreme disappointment. I truly hold that
the only possible response should be some type of
“hasbarah” efforts in explaining what happened here.
! מצפים לישועה & regards Best
SD
Vues Master’s Note: I will not get involved here!

WAR
Dear Vues Master:
I think this war has done something no other historical
event has done in centuries, if ever. It has clearly split the
world into the dark forces and the forces of light. That
might sound like an oversimplification, but I assure you,
it is not. After what Hamas did, if you stand anywhere
besides right next to Israel, you are part of the forces of
darkness. Period. It might not be politically correct to
say, but if you side with Hamas, if you are glorifying Bin
Laden, if you are chanting for the genocide of the Jewish
people, if you are calling for Israel to cease its fire and
let Hamas continue to exist, there really is no other way
to say this and I’m sorry I have to be the one to tell you
this, but you chose wrong. You chose evil. You are an
accomplice to it all! It’s not too late to reconsider but if
you don’t, and you stand against Israel now, you will be
held accountable. Hamas has helped clear things up and
now the world knows clearly who is good and who is
evil. And thanks to the internet, there will be no denying
where you stood. We see you and we won’t forget. Stand
with justice. Stand with morality. Stand with humanity.
Stand with Israel!
Hillel Fuld
Vues Master’s Note: Let us hope this achdus lasts!

EISHET CHAYIL
Dear Vues Master
I just read this beautiful story online & I wanted
to share it with your readers. My husband got
out of the army for a few hours (on the way
to a funeral at Mount Herzl). He told me he
wouldn’t have time to come home and asked
that we meet in Jerusalem. We sat in a cafe in
a Charedi area. The waitress served us some
free treats, on the house. And in the end, when
we asked for the bill, the waitress told us the
bill had already been paid: “One of the other
diners paid for you.” We went outside, still in
shock, when a young Charedi girl approached
me and asked me to give her a bracha. I began
to cry. I said to her: “You want a bracha from
ME? My husband, the soldier should give you
a bracha!” She told me: “No. I want a bracha
from YOU. Bless me that I should grow up to
be an Eshet Chayil, a Woman of Valour, like
you. No words… Master of the Universe.
It looks like we have already won the war–
between us. Now all we have left to do is beat
Hamas.
Vues Master’s Note: Mi Kamcha Yisrael.

TOGETHER
Dear Vues Master:
Rabbi Moshe Brown, the Rosh Yeshiva of
Yeshiva of Far Rockaway discussed how his
Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Ruderman ל“זצ and the
other Gedolei Yisroel responded during the
1967 war. “In 1967 when I was in Baltimore,
I saw my Rosh yeshiva, Rav Ruderman ל“זצ
how he dealt with an צרה עת in the war of
1967. I can tell you then it was not possible
to talk to him during that week. There was
no eating, there was no sleeping, he was
so preoccupied with the war and the worry
and prayers, it was impossible for him to be
engaged with any conversation with anyone

else. During that time the learning was non-
stop, the prayers were not stop, there wasn’t

five minutes there weren’t students in the
study hall studying Torah. Of course they
had a rally. There was a rally at the time in
Washington, well into six figures (attended),
including all the yeshivas, with their Roshei
Yeshivas, including I remember, Philadelphia,
led by Rav Elia Svei himself. Telz came, led by
their Rosh Yeshiva, there was no fifth column;
left, right, center, it didn’t make a difference,
everyone went.”
RUP
Vues Master’s Note: That’s a gadol. A leader.

BELIEF
Dear Vues Master:
I gotta say, if I didn’t have faith in Hakadosh
Baruch Hu, I would have been admitted to a
psychiatric ward long ago because of the utter
insanity that is this war. It’s like everyone else
has a blind fold on, and I’m the only one who
can see reality. Either that, or I’m the insane
one. The IDF proves that Hamas built an
entire terror infrastructure under a hospital.
There are videos that are totally undeniable.
There is footage of Hamas dragging hostages
into the hospital. And yet, once again, there
are otherwise intelligent people saying that

Hamas only brought them to the hospital for
medical care. The footage shows clearly how
they’re dragging them at gunpoint. And yet,
facts don’t matter. But that’s been the theme
of this entire war. Zero logic. The fact that
anyone is even talking about this war is, in
and of itself, illogical. What’s the obsession?
Because the casualty numbers are microscopic
compared to other conflicts around the world.
It makes zero sense. It’s all anyone is talking
about. Why?! The fact that liberal people are
standing with Hamas when Hamas would
murder those people the first chance they get?
Illogical. Insane. The fact that any human
being, let alone millions, stand in solidarity
with an organization that proudly rapes and
beheads children? Utter insanity. The fact that
anyone uses occupation as if that’s justification
for what Hamas did, when there was zero
Jews, dead or alive, in Gaza for decades.
What occupation? Has the world lost its
actual mind? The fact that we have actual first
hand footage of the atrocities and yet; people
still doubt that they happened? Is everyone
smoking something? Are they blind? Listen,
the list is long and if I mentioned every thing
that’s illogical about the war, we’d be here all
day. The bottom line is; for me, the only way
to make sense of any of it, is to understand that
I can’t understand. This situation is not man
made. No human could come up with a script
this unrealistic. If someone would write a
script for a movie describing this war, it would
instantly be rejected as non realistic. And yet,
here we are. I gave up trying to understand any
of this long ago. Why G-d is doing what He is
doing, I have no clue, but I know beyond any
shadow of a doubt that He is pulling the strings
here. I can’t think of any other way to explain
the lies, the hypocrisy, the hatred, the double
standard, and the violence. If I wasn’t in
Israel right now, as a Jew basically anywhere
else in the world, I’d be pretty petrified right
about now. Israel will win this and come out
stronger. What will be with Jews around the
world? I don’t see how this ends well for them.
I guess all that’s left to do is to daven.
Hillel Fuld
Vues Master’s Note: Until we don’t all
acknowledge that Hashem runs this world we
will not be successful!
DAVEN
Dear Vues Master:
Here is an idea that can be easily implemented
at every simcha (chasunah, bar mitzvah, bris,
etc.). Have available two sets of Tehillim
Mechulak – one for the women and one for
the men. Put each set into a box labeled “NOT
READ YET” and have another box next to it
labeled “ALREADY READ. WHEN YOU
COUNT 28 BOOKLETS HERE, PLEASE
TRANSFER THEM BACK TO THE ‘NOT
READ YET’ BOX.” You can designate a
few guests to periodically check if the 28
booklets are in the ALREADY READ box,
and have them transfer them back to the first
box (although any guest can take this upon
themselves to do as well). There is plenty of

“down time” at a simcha that can be spent
productively by saying many rounds of
Tehillim for Eretz Yisrael – for the soldiers,
the injured, the hostages and everyone else
in possible danger. May we hear of nissim
v’niflaos very soon, b’ezras Hashem
M G

Vues Master’s Note: Great idea.

LETTER FROM PROFESSOR
Dear Vues Master
This is a must read. It was written by a Jewish
Canadian Professor, Lena Bykhovsky, who
teaches biblical studies at Carleton University
in Ottawa. I am sending it to you( verbatim)
because it is most eloquently written with
important content.
Dear Students,
I have spent the last 25 years showing you
the beauty of all of the literary, cultural,
philosophical, & artistic heights of the human
spirit over the course of human history.
Teaching you has been the most wonderful
& satisfying of callings. I never wanted to do
anything other than meet with you, discuss
ideas with you, discover & rediscover human
insights, truths, & wonders. I never regretted
my career path, never hated my job, &
never doubted my legacy. I felt privileged &
honoured to show you how to analyse, to think
critically, to weigh evidence, & to understand
people & ideas, contexts & complexity, deeply
& thoroughly. I thought my work was helping
to make the world a better, more humane,
more thoughtful place. You have broken my
heart. No: shattered it, irreparably. I don’t
know how I will ever set foot in a classroom
again. I don’t know how I will ever see you
the same way. I know now that I was deluding
myself that I ever had any impact, would
ever leave any positive legacy, that my work
ever made any difference. I watch you all
on social media, in the streets & the quads,
marching in solidarity with a movement that
seeks only to wipe me out. To exterminate me,
my children, my parents, my entire family &
community. I know, some of you think you’re
trying to help the oppressed. You think that
my kind is the white colonialist racist kind
that you hate. But I thought I taught you how
to evaluate arguments. I thought I taught you
the importance of understanding context, both
historical & rhetorical. I thought that I taught
you that the world did not operate according to
dichotomies, like black & white, oppressor &
oppressed, villain and victim. I thought I taught
you about complexity, about judgment, & to
examine your sources & not to take anyone’s
statements at face value. Zionism is the Jewish
right to self-determination in our ancestral
homeland. Israel is that ancestral homeland.
Jews are the indigenous peoples of that land;
not the only indigenous peoples of that land, to
be sure. But Israel is the only land to which we
are indigenous. After 2000 years of longing,
the result of the Holocaust – a Nazi movement
which sought to ethnically cleanse the world
of Jews by systematically exterminating us –
was that the international community granted

us a sliver of that ancestral homeland. It was to
be shared, partitioned into a Jewish state & an
Arab state. The Arabs rejected the partition &
attacked the Jews when they declared the state
of Israel in 1948. The Jews won. Arabs who
remained in Israel became citizens with full
rights & freedoms. 20% of Israel’s population
today is Arab. They fight in the army, they are
doctors, lawyers, members of Parliament &
supreme court judges. There is no apartheid.
Israel’s Jewish population consists of Jews
from Arab lands, whose parents or grandparents
were kicked out when the state of Israel was
formed, & of descendants of refugees from
Eastern Europe, Holocaust survivors who
had no homes to return to. Some are more
recent refugees from Europe, Russia, & the
Americas who either returned to Israel for
religious reasons or because the Jew-hatred in
their communities grew too excessive & they
decided to emigrate, to head for the one place
in the world Jews can go if their neighbours or
governments turn against them. The West Bank
& Gaza strip – along with refugee camps that
still exist in Lebanon, Syria, & Jordan — were
the places that the Arab nations who attacked
Israel at its founding told the Arabs living in
Palestine (later to be known as Palestinians) to
flee. It was supposed to be temporary, because
the plan was to “push the Jews into the sea.”
When the plan didn’t work out, all of these
states refused to absorb the Palestinians. They
wanted to keep them in camps because they
still planned to annihilate Israel & the Jews
that lived there & then the Palestinians could
return. The West Bank was in Jordan & Gaza
was in Egypt until 1967, when the Arab states
tried again to push the Jews into the sea. Their
failure this time ended with Israel capturing
these territories. When Israel tried to exchange
land for peace & give Gaza back to Egypt,
Egypt didn’t want it. And so the territories
remained in Israel. In 2005 Israel pulled out
of Gaza & left it to govern itself. Most of
the West Bank is also self-governing, but not
all because of the high number of suicide
bombers & other threats to Israel’s existence
fomenting there, so Israel hasn’t been able to
fully remove itself. The current awful Israeli
government has allowed religious fanatics,
“settlers,” to build settlements there, which
makes everything worse. And you see what I
did there? I criticized Israel’s government. I
can do that, & still support the existence of a
Jewish state in our ancestral homeland. When
you say “from the river to the sea, Palestine
will be free,” this is a call to ethnic cleansing
of Jews from their homeland, from the only
state in the entire Middle East that would look
remotely familiar to you in terms of basic
rights & freedoms & a democratic system if
you were to visit the region. When Hamas
supporters – like those who led you all in a
rally on my home campus today – talk about
Jews as “occupiers,” they don’t mean Gaza.
They mean the whole state of Israel. They want
Jews eradicated from the entire land. Hamas
actually wants us gone from the whole world,
as they have stated many times. Who are the

Nazis now? But here I am, teaching again. I
can’t help myself. I wish that you cared what I
had to say. I wish that some knowledge, some
context, some understanding, could reach
beyond the slogans & chants for my death
that you are repeating mindlessly & endlessly
as you march to the beat of hatred across the
tattered remains of my broken soul.
BT
Vues Master’s Note: Very well written. Thank
you for sharing!

RIPPING DOWN POSTERS
Dear Vues Master:
Controversy has erupted on American college
campuses and elsewhere over anti-Israel
extremists tearing down posters that feature
photos of the Hamas hostages. At Columbia
University, a pro-Hamas student assaulted
a Jewish student who was putting up one of
the posters. In addition to the college students
who have torn down the posters, the vandals
have included an attorney from the New York
County public defender’s office, a Boston
dentist, an employee of the University of
Pennsylvania law school, and a professor at the
Michigan Ross School of Business. It’s bad
enough when seemingly respectable people,
such as attorneys or professors, engage in such
reprehrensible behavior. But what about when
a dean at a university is the one committing
the vandalism? An incident of this nature
took place in Boston many years ago, but it
sounds like something from today’s headlines-
-and the lessons from it are as relevant as ever.
During the 1930s, a number of prominent
American universities cultivated friendly ties
with Nazi Germany. Prof. Stephen Norwood
described in his book The Third Reich in the
Ivory Tower how those schools invited Nazi
representatives to speak on their campuses,
participated in student exchange programs with
Nazi-controlled universities, and sent delegates
to Germany to take part in celebratory events
at those institutions. The fact that German
universities had purged their Jewish faculty
members and hosted book-burnings did not
deter friendly overtures from schools such as
Harvard, Columbia, and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1933,
MIT president Karl Compton pressured Jewish
students to refrain from sending a protest
message to Adolf Hitler over the persecution
of Jews in Germany. In 1937, Compton sent
an MIT representative to participate in the
bicentennial celebration of the Nazi-controlled
University of Gottingen. When Compton was
asked to hire a German Jewish refugee scholar
for MIT’s mathematics department in 1942, he
objected on the grounds that the department
already had one Jewish professor, according
to Prof. Laurel Leff, in her book Well Worth
Saving. Compton told his colleagues there
was “a tactical danger of having too large a
proportion of the mathematical staff from
the Jewish race [since] the appointment of an
additional member of the Jewish race would
increase the proportion of such men in the
Department far beyond the proportion of [Jews

in the general] population.” The poster-tearing
incident took place in May 1934. That spring,
the Roosevelt administration cooperated in
the visit of the Nazi warship Karlsruhe to the
United States, as part of President Roosevelt’s
policy in the 1930s of maintaining friendly
relations with Nazi Germany. The officers of
the Karlsruhe were given tours of U.S. army
and navy stations at the ports where they
docked. U.S. navy vessels even provided boats,
personnel, and equipment to help the Karlsruhe
carry out military exercises off the Los
Angeles coast the following year. When the
Karlsruhe docked in the Boston harbor in 1934,
its officers and crew were entertained at both
Harvard and MIT. Local Jewish organizations
and other opponents of Nazism called for a
mass protest. James A. Wechsler—who
later was an editor at the New York Post for
several decades—was an anti-Nazi activist at
Columbia University at the time and closely
followed what was happening at MIT. He
wrote: “The officialdom of M.I.T. was…
entertaining cadets from the ship with Dean
[Harold] Lobdell as their personal supervisor.
The Dean was distraught. He scurried through
the building tearing down posters announcing
the anti-Nazi demonstration. When one student
accosted him during this performance, the
Dean explained that the sponsors of the protest
were not a recognized group—although they
had been even granted official permission by
the [administration] to use the bulletin boards.”
Benjamin Netanyahu earned his bachelor’s
degree and his master’s at MIT in the 1970s.
The student body has changed a lot since then.
MIT students were among the first to cheer
the Hamas pogrom. On October 8—while
1,400 dead bodies still lay strewn throughout
towns in southern Israel—the “MIT Coalition
Against Apartheid” declared that it “hold[s]
the Israeli regime responsible for all unfolding
violence.” The statement endorsed the right of
the pogromists “to resist oppression,” that is, to
slaughter the Jewish infants who, apparently,
were oppressing them. Soon afterwards,
hundreds of MIT students staged a pro-Hamas
rally on campus. Among other slogans, they
shouted “One solution: Intifada Revolution,”
an obvious endorsement of Palestinian
Arab terrorism against Israeli Jews. MIT
President Sally Kornbluth responded with an
“even-handed” statement. Sure, the Hamas
killings were “brutal,” she said, but “many
innocent Palestinians” would also die. Yes,
Jewish students say “they feel unsafe on our
campus,” but “Palestinian students also fear
being targeted.” And of course antisemitism

is “corrosive,” but so is “anti-Arab and anti-
Muslim hatred.” The spirit of indifference

to Jewish suffering, exemplified by MIT

Dean Lobdell tearing down Jewish anti-
Nazi posters in 1934, lives on today—both

among those who tear down posters of Jewish
hostages and among university officials, at
MIT and elsewhere, who seem incapable of
unequivocally acknowledging the victimization
of the Jews, without any ifs, ands, or buts.
Rafael Medoff

Vues Master’s Note: It is the only halacha
brought down in Rashi on Chumash that
Eisav Sonei L’Yaakov!

TURKEY
Dear Vues Master:
A woman who was picking through the
frozen turkeys at the butcher shop asked “Do
these turkeys get any bigger?” The butcher
responded: “No ma’am, they’re dead.”
FA
Vues Master’s Note: Sounds like a lot of
gobble gobble gobbledygook!

FEELING
Dear Vues Master:
Mendel boarded a cross-country flight and
took his seat next to the window. A few
minutes later, a mean-looking giant of a man
took the seat next to him and promptly fell
asleep. It wasn’t a pleasant flight. There was
lots of turbulence and Mendel felt quite sick.
He needed to go to the toilet, but the giant
next to him was sound asleep. Mendel was
afraid to wake him. The turbulence continued
and Mendel was overcome by the wave of
nausea and threw up all over his seatmate.
It was awful! When the giant finally woke
up and saw the vomit all over him, Mendel
asked: “So, are you feeling better now?”
DW
Vues Master’s Note: Sad but exactly what is
being done to Israel now in social media!

HEALTH
Dear Vues Master:
A Jew and an Arab were in adjacent beds at
Hadassah Hospital. Every day, a Chabad man
came and put tefillin on each of them. On
Shabbat, when he of course didn’t show up,
the Arab asked the Jew: “Where is the man
who takes the blood pressure?
GA
Vues Master’s Note: Should strap them Arabs
down!

PROUD
Dear Vues Master:
I have sent the following letter excluding the
last two short sentences,to Newsday. I think
that even if the world does not acknowledge
these truths, it is important that we should
be proud of who we are, what is important
to us, and how we conduct ourselves. I
was disappointed to find the massive rally
in support of Israel buried on page 16.
According to reliable sources at the scene,
not preliminary projections, attendance
was well over 250,000 people from across
a broad spectrum of Americans, not just
Jews. Further, It was one of very few times,
if not the only time in the last decade, that
prominent members of both parties joined
together, united in support of a major issue
that faces not only Israel and the Middle East,
but America and the entire world. I would
like to highlight one major aspect of this rally,
one I have not seen mentioned in any of the
media: Almost every rally, demonstration,
or protest in recent memory, even those of
only several dozen participants, have been

reported as being “mostly peaceful.” This
rally of over a quarter of a million people
had no civil disruptions. [Thank you, police
officers, for keeping counter protestors
separate.]There was no destruction of
property, no confrontation with police, and no
arrests. It was “completely peaceful.” Many
of the officers even commented on how many
of the participants stopped to thank them for
their service. What a testament to the civility
we aspire to but so seldom achieve. What a
kiddush Hashem. Mi k’amcha Yisroel.
HS
Vues Master’s Note: Media only reports what
fits their narrative!

GENOCIDE
Dear Vues Master,
When you quote the number of casualties in
Gaza, and claim Israel is guilty of committing
genocide (the Palestinian population has
grown by 600% since Israel was established
but don’t worry about the facts.), ask
yourself where those numbers come from.
That’s right. From Hamas. Now that we’ve
established that the UN and the media are
taking numbers from Hamas, here’s another
question. In those numbers, they have women,
children, the elderly, and other innocent
Gazans. Curious, how many terrorists has
Israeli eliminated according to the Hamas
ministry of health? Zero? That’s right. Their
fake numbers include zero terrorists. I guess
Israel is really really bad at getting terrorists.
Killed all those people and not one terrorist.
Got it. Seems like reliable info. Amazing what
some good old fashioned Jew hatred does
to the human brain. Now let me tell you the
real truth. The vast majority of people killed
in Gaza are Hamas terrorists. Others were
killed by Hamas when trying to escape. And
then there are the innocent people used by
Hamas as shields. That’s the truth. Israel goes
to unparalleled lengths to avoid (passively, by
not attacking where there are civilians) and
prevent (actively, by evacuating them under
Hamas fire) the loss of innocent lives on both
sides. Stop believing Hamas’ propaganda. As
for the “innocent” Palestinians, here are the
facts. At what point do you understand that
just like the German people paid a just price
for electing Hitler, so too the people of Gaza
are paying the same price for electing Hamas?
The lies and hypocrisy surrounding this war
are astounding.
Hillel Fuld
Vues Master’s Note: Media only
reports what fits their narrative!