Sound the Shofar of Freedom

Three times daily we implore G-d in prayer:

"Sound the great shofar for our freedom."

As we prepare to sound the shofar and usher in the new Jewish year this Sunday, it's high time we assess the precarious state of freedom in our present day.

In case you haven't been paying attention, freedom is in serious jeopardy here in the United States and around the world.

Fear and dread are historic ways with which tyrants have exploited populations to willingly cede their freedoms.

Pandemic panic and pandemonium have recently accomplished just that. Quicker than you can say "social distancing," government has already begun to encroach on our precious freedoms in ways hitherto unimaginable.

Without any strict scrutiny, the state has shut down our houses of worship, banned our gatherings, violated our bodily autonomy, forcing masks on our faces, all without providing a shred of scientific evidence that asymptomatic carriers pose significant risk to anyone. And they are poised to do much more... brace yourselves for adult vaccine mandates.

Truth be told, this sort of medical tyranny is not without precedent.

For years, government has enforced a mandatory vaccine policy on school-age children while we were asleep at the wheel. They threw us a doggy bone. "Religious exemption" was the paltry concession prize we were "benevolently" rewarded for tolerating their benign despotism.

And in recent months and years, just before the Wuhan virus was unleashed, states began to take back these religious exemptions, by default forcing all children to comply with their mandated vaccine policies without exception.

Of course, the state had no right to meddle with religious freedom, since the First Amendment was inviolable to begin with. In past articles [1], I've lamented the grave injustice of vaccine mandates altogether.

In the spirit of sounding the Shofar of freedom, let's make it known to all that Judaism strongly advocates medical choice.

Vaccination must be a choice. It may not be coerced.

If you want 99% vaccination compliance, move to Communist China. It's unattainable here in Land of the Free.

If you are so panic-stricken by disease, perhaps you shouldn't live in a free society where bodily autonomy and First Amendment rights are sacrosanct.

China might be a better fit for you. They enforce compulsory vaccination with no exceptions, so you'll feel right at home. They tend to force-sterilize people too, but hey, as long as you're not an Muslim Uighur or some political dissident, and you only have one child, you should be just fine.

Some have asked me: "Does that mean you want measles to return?"

My response:

Not necessarily, but I'd prefer a return to measles of the fifties any day before submitting to medical dictatorship.

I don't want disease. I just want freedom. But if freedom comes with a price tag that includes increased risk of any particular disease, then so be it.

Tyranny is far more dangerous to humanity than any microbe ever was.

Give me freedom or give me death.

I simply yearn to breathe free. I do not wish to be part of a new huddled masses in my own country, marginalized and persecuted by an all-powerful pharmaceutical lobby driven by its insatiable profit margins.

No, I do not want your medical bondage.

Nope, I will not join you in your dependency on pharmaceutical products.  

I will not accept anything less than freedom.

Freedom to choose what I put into my body.

Freedom from dubious ingredients like:

• glyphosates
• fluoride
• aluminum adjuvants
• thimerosal mercury
• dna from murdered human beings in a cruel procedure of live dissection,
• substances that carry risks of carcinogenicity, mutagenicity, infertility
• substances that haven't been evaluated for carcinogenicity, mutagenicity, infertility

to name a few, and many more morally objectionable ingredients that I never consented to.

If I am forced to choose, I prefer natural dangers to man-made ones.

As King David observed (and we cite in the Selichot liturgy): "I am greatly oppressed; let us fall now into the hand of G-d; for His mercies are great; but into the hand of man let me not fall." (Samuel II 24:14) -- נִפְּלָה נָּא בְיַד ה' כִּי רַבִּים רַחֲמָיו וּבְיַד אָדָם אַל אֶפֹּלָה

So while I might applaud researchers' efforts to develop a safe vaccine for a coronavirus or any virus, I will oppose a mandate with every fiber of my being.

And so should you, if you cherish freedom.

Sound the Shofar and let freedom ring.

Notes:

[1] https://westbororabbi.blogspot.com/2019/08/whats-wrong-with-religious-exemption.html

https://westbororabbi.blogspot.com/2020/01/exposing-lies.html

https://westbororabbi.blogspot.com/2019/09/bodily-autonomy-and-halacha_11.html