Heads or Tails?

 

Rosh Hashana literally means "head of the year."

The Bible commands us to sound the ram's horn on this day.

Not coincidentally, the horn extends prominently from the top of the ram's head.

Indeed, Rosh Hashana is the time of Year to use your own Head.

Do not be a tail that follows obsequiously behind the dog that wags it. Don't be a hind to the hound.

Be a head instead. Think for yourself. That's how you will get ahead. That's how we will all get ahead.

That's why we implore G-d to "sound the great shofar for our freedom."

Freedom is only possible when you use your mind. If you blindly follow the herd, you are not free by definition.

When you use your own mind, you will likely face antagonism by those who insist that you follow the herd.

That's why you will need a formidable and prominent horn to fend off herd-enforcing predators.

Be resolute, fearless, and loud.

Be a ram's horn and blast the truth.

Blast it long and hard (tekia).

Blast it with humility & a broken heart (shevarim).

Blast it out and shake up the status quo (teruah).

Shake up the silence and complicity.

Shake up the adversary's narrative which all tails blindly wag to.

Demand truth, accountability, and objective morality.

Sound the shofar of your freedom.

Acknowledge the sovereignty of G-d and none other.

Reject blind subservience to human masters in public and private sectors.

Declare yourself free from pharmaceutical and media overlords.

Cast off your chains of subjugation.

Remember the Torah's timeless words etched in the iconic bell that was rung on the day our nation came into being:

"Proclaim freedom throughout the land for all who live on it. It shall be a year of Shofar Blasts for you, and you shall return, each individual to one's own birthright. You shall all return to [what is safest for] one's own family." [1]

Freedom is your birthright. Reclaim it.

Don't ever sacrifice it for the sake of an alleged herd.

Sound your shofar throughout the land and proclaim freedom for all and for each individual.

Blast it a hundred times and more, even if it sounds repetitive.

Blast it out unambiguously and boldly.

Don't hide behind a mask. Don't cower under a tallis.

Don't be an ostrich with your head in the sand.

Take off that mask and show your face. Let your true colors shine.

Stop being a sheep. Be a ram's horn.

Call out to G-d from a place of constriction and He'll answer you with expansiveness. [2]

Cry out from your narrow & constricted world view. Open your mind to accept an expansive and liberating reality, a G-dly reality.

By sounding your shofar, you'll invoke the great shofar that will usher in a time of true freedom, the ingathering of all exiles and ultimate Redemption.

So what will it be for you this Rosh Hashana? Heads or Tails?

"Behold, I placed before you this day good and evil, life and death." Freedom or subjugation.

Choose freedom, "so that you and your children may live." [3]

May we be heads and not tails -- יהי רצון שנהיה לראש ולא לזנב.

Notes:

[1] Leviticus 25:10

[2] Psalms 118:5

[3] Deuteronomy 30:19

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

Stop the Blame Game

Beware the trap of blaming people for disease.

The base instinct to fault others is a typical human response to tragedy or panic, but it leads to nowhere good.

We must NOT fall prey to believing the mainstream narrative that unmasked or unvaccinated people are guilty of spreading disease.

It is HATE speech and incitement.

It's utterly false and contrived.

There is no evidence that asymptomatic individuals cause transmission of this disease in any numerically significant number of cases.

This sort of hate speech that exploits the American people's fear of a deadly disease is savage, primitive, and downright un-American.

It's unscientific, feebleminded, and infantile.

It's an anachronism in modern society. One would hope that we've progressed from the depraved indoctrination tactics of Hitler, Stalin, Salem witch hunters, and medieval Catholic clergy who scapegoated Jews for the Black Plague.

It is intolerable and unconscionable.

If you have been guilty of giving voice to this egregious fabrication on social media, I implore you to cease and desist at once.

Forget about petty politics, virtue signaling, or trying to sound woke or in vogue.

You're playing with fire.

In the name of justice and truth, stop fanning the fire of hate.

By all means, feel free to proudly wear your mask and get your flu shot, but do NOT unleash your tongue against those who do choose differently. Do not revile or denounce them, and do NOT accuse them of spreading disease.... because the most LETHAL disease in the world -- historically and in our times -- is hatred, and YOU are spreading it.

Stop spreading disease.

I've sounded the alarm about this disturbing and deadly societal trend in a recent post. Public health officials and media have stoked the fires of hate with their toxic narrative. We must reject it at all costs.

There's too much at stake.

Their objective is medical tyranny and their method is fear-mongering, scapegoating, intimidation and incitement.

No, the ends do NOT justify the means.

Instead, it's high time we promote healing instead of perpetuating the illness of hate.

Choose tolerance over division. Truth over falsehood.

Freedom over tyranny.

Yearning to Breathe Free

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."

Is the right to "breathe free" no longer guaranteed in the so-called "Land of Liberty?"

Isn't my prerogative to "breathe free" protected by the Bill of Rights?

Isn't the freedom to breathe without obstruction implicit in the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?"

Recently I was asked:

"Is there a 'religious exemption' to mandatory mask policy?"

I responded:

Ask better: should anyone even need an exemption?

What about bodily autonomy and the Nuremburg Code?

Who gave state the right to interfere with your breathing in the first place?

"It's to protect people," or so goes the official party line.

There may be some benefit to masks in curbing the spread of disease, but does this alleged benefit justify violating a healthy individual's personal autonomy?

No, it doesn't.

Mask proponents will counter: "How do you know that the individual is healthy? May she's an 'asymptomatic carrier?'"

Answer:

Maybe so, but there's nothing you can do about that, unless you can prove that this person is actively contagious or at least that she was recently exposed to someone who was actively contagious. Alternatively, you'd need to empirically demonstrate that a significant segment of the asymptomatic population is indeed contagious with a deadly disease.

Otherwise, keep your hands off her mouth and nose. And keep your hands off the Bill of Rights too while you're at it.

You have no right to interfere with my civil rights or bodily autonomy. My body, my choice.

The only way you may suspend my rights is if you can prove with strict scrutiny that I pose an actual risk to you or anyone else.

There has been no "strict scrutiny" with regards to mask mandates. It's all based on statistical models. It has never been scientifically proven that asymptomatic carriers are contagious in numerically significant cases, at least not nearly enough to give government sweeping powers that effectively deem every healthy person a "risk to society" as a "contagious asymptomatic carrier" by default.

It doesn't matter if some, many, or all virologists think societal masking is an effective way to stop the spread of virus in a population.

Bodily autonomy is sacrosanct.

People who are afraid are welcome to stay indoors, or wear N-95 protective ventilators before venturing out. They may NOT enforce ventilators on anyone else in the public domain (unless that person is known to be contagious).

All this aside, let's address the question I was asked above. Does the mandatory mask policy infringes in anyone's religious freedom?

Answer:

Yes, it violates a basic tenet of the world's original Abrahamic faith, Judaism.

Deuteronomy 4:16: "You shall guard your souls exceedingly well." This means that you are entrusted with the obligation to safeguard your own health. Yes, we also have communal responsibility towards others, but that is secondary.

Our sages taught: "Your life comes first before the life of your fellow."

Breathing is synonymous with life itself. The Biblical Hebrew term for your life-giving soul is nefesh, "breathing."

Another synonym for soul is neshamah, also "breathing."[1]

Breathing is sacrosanct. The term pikuach nefesh means saving lives, but literally it means "searching to save anyone who's still breathing" (i.e. in a collapsed building).

The world's most competent expert in your own well-being is... YOU.

The Code of Jewish Law[2] rules:

If it's Yom Kippur and a person says: "I need to eat," even if he doesn't claim his life might be endangered by not eating...he should immediately be given food until he says: "Enough."
We do not assume that he is a wicked person [who wishes to violate Yom Kippur]. Instead, the assumption is that he feels that he indeed requires this food, for a person’s own heart knows the bitterness of his soul. Therefore, even if a hundred doctors say that he does not need to eat, and even if they say that food will harm him, we listen to the patient. [It is assumed that] he certainly needs [to eat], because he knows that it is Yom Kippur, and he nevertheless requests food.

Takeaway:

I am the most reliable expert concerning my own life, i.e. my breathing.

If I feel that I cannot breathe properly with a mask, I am Biblically prohibited from keeping the mask on my face.

It is irrelevant if all the doctors on earth clinically observe me and insist that the mask does not impede my breathing. 

I am entitled to assert my need to unobstructed breathing, irrespective of any "professional" opinion. It's irrelevant if public health ideologues claim that my unhindered breathing poses some sort of statistical risk to society.

Like flight attendants always say, make sure you can breathe before worrying about the breathing of another.

How much more so when your breathing endangers no one except for an alleged statistic and political agenda.

So take off that mask and breathe freely with pride. You are observing G-d's law, and you're unabashedly asserting your religious freedom in the process.

Savor your freedom like a breath of fresh air.

Inhale air that's rich in oxygen, the only nutrient that government hasn't figured out a way to tax us for.

Exhale with joy. Know that you are embodying the last verse in Psalms, "Let every soul praise G-d, Hallelujah!" as interpreted phonetically by our sages, "With every breath of air that you breathe you are praising your Creator."[3]

Don't let anyone force a mask over that divine act of lauding your Creator.

To sum it up, current "mandatory mask policy" threatens to destroy the very fabric of our republic and jeopardizes the freedoms we all hold dear. 

When these unjust policies are policed, we no longer live in a free society, but in a police state.

"Give me your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" cried Lady Liberty of old. That's all ancient history now.

Today's USA mercilessly forces masks onto the faces of her citizens.

"I can't breathe" cries the individuals who are gasping for a breath of freedom.

"Too bad, stop being selfish!" yells public health police. "Your breathing is 'endangering' others! Your freedoms endanger 'public health'!" they shriek menacingly. "No more freedom for you."

Today's USA is creating new "huddled masses" of citizens who yearn to breathe free.

The medical tyranny of today's America has marginalized an emerging population nationwide. These despised individuals are tempest-tossed, wretched, and downtrodden by media, state, and medical elites, the "ruling class" of contemporary society. These families are the huddled masses who dare to defy the robber barons of our era, the omnipotent pharmaceutical industry and their government enablers.

They are reviled simply because they brazenly insist on taking ownership of their own health and medical choices. These are the brave men, women and children who refuse to bow down to the idol of 'public health.' No, they will not be masked or muzzled.

Welcome to the "huddled masses" of 2020, hated and persecuted for their outrageous desire to "breathe free."



Notes:

[1] Also ruach, "wind."
[2] Orach Chayim 318:1
[3] Bereshis Rabbah 14:9, based on Psalms 150:6 -- "על כל נשימה ונשימה שאדם נושם"

17 of Tamuz revisited?

Today we mourn the cataclysmic event when the walls of Jerusalem were breached. 

Sadly, lots of contemporary rabbis haven't learned much from 1,950 years of exile.

They still support policies that cater to their Kamtza's and marginalize their Bar Kamtza's.

They stand by silently while the walls of freedom and yahadus are breached. 

They nodded in tacit approval when thousands of children were cruelly ousted from school this past year Bar-Kamtza-style, and when all other children were banned from school this year, all for no just cause.  

["Jerusalem was destroyed only because they interrupted the studies of school children from their classrooms." Shabbos 119b]

And if you protest these grave injustices,  they'll attempt to marginalize and silence you. How dare you disturb their comfortable status quo?

Gentlemen,  your walls have been breached.  Your temple is burning. You have become compromised and complicit. Wake up from your reverie.

Kaiser juden indeed. 

*            *            *

Upon further reflection, there is more contemporary correlation with the 17th of Tammuz than meets the eye.

A total of five tragic events occurred on this same date in history:

1)  As mentioned, the walls of Jerusalem were breached in 69 CE.

2) Moses broke the Tablets during the sin of the Golden Calf, circa 1313 BCE.

3)  The daily Temple service was discontinued in 423 BCE.

4)  Roman general Apostomus burned the Torah and

5)  An idol was placed in the Holy Temple.

Tragically, in our times we are reliving these disastrous experiences, one by one:

1)  Education of our children has been breached and violated.

2)  The laws of our holy Torah have been broken as a result of a most blatant form of modern-day idolatry, worship of so-called "public health policy." Undoubtedly the "golden calf" of contemporary times, public health policy rules by divine right which no one may question. This much-revered idol was fashioned out of gold, i.e. rich profit margins of pharmaceutical companies and their robber-baron executives. Everyone bows down to this golden calf, even many rabbis. Everyone is on its payroll, especially government.

3)  Our close-knit communal service has been disrupted and discontinued by the dictates of pandemic hysteria and the political ideologues who enforce it.

4)  The Torah has been burned, neglected, scorned. Authentic Torah learning no longer matters, nor do any of its precepts, like visiting the sick, escorting the dead, etc.

5)  An idol has been placed in our sanctuaries. The idol is the lie, the mask with which its wearer pledges allegiance to the almighty deity of 'public health' who dictated it. All who don't comply are ousted from synagogue, reported to the police, dragged away from park benches. This deity rules by "might makes right" like all other forms of classical paganism. It doesn't matter if you're healthy. You must comply or else.

Alas, we are indeed reliving the calamities of the 17th of Tamuz in real time.

Question is: will we wake up to the truth before it's too late?