A Year Of Loss: Orthodox Jewry Reels As Gedoilim Die During Covid-19 Pandemic

 

Funeral of Rav Soloveitchik

Three times on Sunday, Orthodox men carried the body of a beloved Torah scholar wrapped in a black and white prayer shawl through the streets of Jerusalem to a freshly dug grave.

First there was Rabbi Dovid Soloveitchik, the 99-year-old heir to a vaunted tradition of Talmud study. A few hours later it was Rabbi Yitzchok Sheiner, the 98-year-old leader of a prominent yeshiva. And in the evening they took Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski, a psychiatrist and scion of multiple Hasidic dynasties, to his final resting place near Beit Shemesh.

By nightfall, the Orthodox world could count three fewer rabbinic scholars than when the day began. All died of COVID-19, the disease that has killed well over 2.3 million people around the world, including more than 400,000 in the United States and nearly 5,000 in Israel. In Israel, 1 in 132 haredi Orthodox Jews over 65 had died of COVID-19 by the end of 2020.

The weekend’s losses were relentless in their pace, but they reflected a cruel fact of life in the Orthodox world over the past year. A long list of Orthodox rabbinic leaders have died, leaving communities reeling from their losses and at times wondering who will emerge to fill their shoes. The deaths from COVID — and from other causes during a pandemic that curtailed the mourning rituals that usually follow the deaths of major rabbis — spanned the range of the Orthodox community, from Modern Orthodox to Lithuanian, or non-Hasidic haredi, to Hasidic.

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Nearly Two-Thirds Of Chareidi Jews In UK Had COVID........HIGHEST IN THE WORLD:

 A study published on Tuesday shows that nearly two-thirds of the Chareidi population in London have coronavirus antibodies, one of the highest recorded rates in a community in the world.

The study, performed by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), showed that 64% of Chareidi Jews have virus antibodies, which includes 28% of children under the age of five and over half of school-age children.

The number is staggering compared to the 11% infection rate in the general population in London and just 7% across the UK.

“Estimates are amongst the highest sero-prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 described anywhere in the world to date,” the researchers stated.

According to the study, the main source of infection among Chareidi Jews in London was at Purim gatherings during the first wave and morbidity sharply decreased after a lockdown was imposed in the city.

The researchers noted that it cannot be assumed that the community has herd immunity despite its high infection rate and health regulations must still be strictly maintained.

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Jewish Man Leaves $2.4 Million To French Village Who Hid His Family From Nazis

 

Nazi soldiers march through Paris, France, October 24, 1940

A Jewish man who fled Nazi-occupied Austria with his family during the Holocaust bequeathed a large part of his personal fortune to the French village whose residents saved his family members from the Nazis along with thousands of other Jews.

Eric Schwam, who passed away at the age of 90 in late December, instructed in his will to give about $2.4 million to the remote mountain village of Chambon-sur-Lignon in southeast France. Schwam did not leave behind any children and the sum was a large part of his fortune.

“It’s a large amount for the village,” Mayor Jean-Michel Eyraud told AFP.

Schwam and his extended family arrived in Chambon-sur-Lignon in 1943 and were hidden by the villagers, along with between 3,000 to 5,000 other Jews. Village residents were later recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem in Israel, one of only two locales collectively honored by Yad Hashem. (The other is Nieuwlande, in the Netherlands.)

The village residents, who have been primarily Huguenot or Protestant since the 17th century, had a history of sheltering those in need even before the Holocaust, including sheltering priests fleeing the French Revolution and Spanish Civil War refugees.

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12 Year Old Jewish Boy that Believes He is a Girl .. Designs "non-binary" Bikini Bottoms

I know I know you didn't read the article yet... I have a word of advice before you do... Get a barf bag!

Did I read that this was a 12 year old? A 12 year old little "shtinker" is now designing bottoms that conceals the fact that the wearer is really a boy and made specifically to fool naive innocent girls into thinking that he is a girl ...What's even more bizarre  is that his father is crazier and more dangerous than him...The father relates in this article that the boy was thinking about this for 6 years ...? So when this kid was 6 instead of concentrating just being a kid he was consumed with having Purim all year round to fool his playmates..What a "sneak"

And believe it or not there is actually an altruistic side to this .....the father that should really be locked for child abuse says:

"All proceeds from sales of RUBIES t-shirts go to the goal of sending 1,000 pairs of bikini bottoms to trans girls from families in need."

Here I copied a comment from a reader on the original post that basically sums up these meshigina parents..

 Davenport Grolsch

This is one of the many reasons I could never again live in Toronto. To assume that a fifth grader could have a clue about sexual identity, and moreover have the sanction of her family to play games of permanence like this is still amazing to me. And then to describe the feeling of being in the wrong gender as, quote, "When I was little I would wear my mom’s high heels. I played with Bratz dolls and was obsessed with princesses." So what? Lots of boys play with dolls and princesses, why assume this means the poor boy was born into the wronig gender? My little girl likes trucks and buses, should I take her to the doctor to inject her with hormones? I just cannot believe how we have abandoned these children like this, in some arbitrary ad hoc aim for "self-affirmation." These are children, for god's sake. We are experimenting with them. The poor boy will wake up in a few years-- maybe as a healthy gay man, maybe not-- and hopefully it will not be too late. We will never be forgiven.

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Fauchi Now Backtracks and Says "Two Masks Will Not make a Difference"

 

Hold on...wait...Last Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that wearing two masks “likely” made it safer. But now this week Dr. Fauci said "there’s no data that indicates that that is going to make a difference." https://t.co/SmDz4aqxx9

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) February 1, 2021

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New York Assembly Looking to Allow He/She's To "Street Walk" ... Solicit Prostitution

 There is a law now in New York State that prohibits prostitutes to "street walk" to walk the streets to solicit sex for pay...

But that is only for real women...

Now the NYS assembly will vote next week to allow "transgender humans" to "street walk"

See here how your assemblyman plans to  vote..

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Now Its Kamala Harris that is Confused ...Warns Of West Virginia’s ‘Abandoned Land Mines’

 

Confused Kamala Harris Warns Of West Virginia’s ‘Abandoned Land Mines’ https://t.co/WYmxESG4yx

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) February 1, 2021

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After 440,000 Americans are Dead – Facebook and American Journal of Medicine Admit Their Stand on HCQ was Wrong

 

A new study posted in the American Journal of Medicine in January found that early treatment of coronavirus patients with hydroxychloroquine lowered the mortality rate for the disease.

The study found that immediate use of HCQ, while the patient was still at home, showed significant benefits.

This is just the latest study that shows the effectiveness of HCQ in treating the coronavirus.

For the past several months the website c19study.com has been tracking the HCQ-coronavirus studies.

According to c19study.com there have been 237 studies, 171 of which were peer reviewed that show 67% of patients improved in early treatment trials.

Also today the Facebook Oversight Board announced it was overturning a previous case on the effectiveness of HCQ.

Facebook’s previously removed a post on the use of hydroxychloroquine in France which it claimed, “contributes to the risk of imminent… physical harm.”

Today Facebook announced this was a mistake.

How many hundreds of thousands of victims were killed due to Dr. Fauci, the CDC and the tech giants’ false claims on hydroxychloroquine?

The jihad against HCQ was to get back at Trump. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are dead today!

When will these people face justice?

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Need for haredi communal life outweighs virus risks ....There should be no reasonable expectation that this will change.

 By JEREMY SHARON  

On Sunday, two of the most senior and revered rabbis in the ultra-Orthodox world died following complications they suffered from COVID-19.

Rabbi Meshulam David Soloveitchik, 99, a scion of the famed Soloveitchik family and rabbinic dynasty and dean of the Brisk Yeshiva in Jerusalem died Sunday morning after a series of medical problems including being diagnosed with the coronavirus three months ago. 

Both funerals were attended by thousands of ultra-Orthodox men despite the ban on outdoor gatherings of more than 10 people.

Rabbis Soloveitchik and Scheiner join a long list of other prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbis to have died from COVID-19 in Israel and the US, as well as numerous other senior ultra-Orthodox rabbis and educators, including the grand rabbi of Kozlover hassidim, the grand rabbi of Amshinov hassidim in Borough Park, New York, the grand rabbi of Stanislaver hassidim, the grand rabbi of Novominsk hassidim, and the grand rabbi of Pittsburgher hassidim.

In October last year, the most senior Ashkenazi, non-hassidic ultra-Orthodox leader in the world Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, 93, contracted COVID-19 as well after a failure to observe regulations, but incredibly did not suffer from severe symptoms.

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'Our fight against COVID mutations will take many years' .. Yoav Kish Deputy Health Minister

 

srael remains dangerously high, despite the ongoing lockdown and mass vaccination campaign.

“The situation is concerning,” Kish said during an interview with Radio 103FM. “We still aren’t seeing the decrease we have been expecting in the number of seriously ill patients.”

Kish pushed back on Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s criticism of the Prime Minister’s demand for additional extensions of the lockdown, calling Gantz’s opposition “political”.

“There is a political matter here. What I saw at the last government meeting was that Gantz is unwilling to compromise on his position. His position is different from that of the Health Ministry’s experts, and he is able to force it on the entire State of Israel.”

“The situation here is dangerous, different positions can create a situation of paralysis.”

Kish also warned that the new variants of the coronavirus will likely require serious government measures to combat them for years to come.

“The British mutation is far more infectious. And this won’t be the last mutation. We’re in a battle that will be with us for many years.”

“There is a political matter here. What I saw at the last government meeting was that Gantz is unwilling to compromise on his position. His position is different from that of the Health Ministry’s experts, and he is able to force it on the entire State of Israel.”

“The situation here is dangerous, different positions can create a situation of paralysis.”

Kish also warned that the new variants of the coronavirus will likely require serious government measures to combat them for years to come.

“The British mutation is far more infectious. And this won’t be the last mutation. We’re in a battle that will be with us for many years.”

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