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Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.

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Government lifts ban on outgoing flights for citizens

First easing of lockdown restrictions does away with the measure that had only allowed those who bought a ticket before September 25 to fly

Israel announced Thursday that it was lifting an unpopular ban on citizens flying out of the country, in an initial easing of the nationwide coronavirus lockdown.

“As of Friday, October 16, 2020, the emergency ordinance restricting entry to the airport for those who have not met the defined criteria will be canceled,” a government statement said.

The flight ban was part of a slew of restrictions added on September 25 to reinforce a lockdown that began a week earlier.

The government has since allowed access to flights only to those who had bought their tickets prior to September 25.

Israelis and foreigners with a residency visa are allowed to fly into the country, but those landing from so-called “red countries” — those with high coronavirus rates — must observe a 14-day quarantine.

The nationwide COVID-19 lockdown, the Jewish state’s second since March, limited public prayer and placed strict curbs on demonstrations.

A meeting of the so-called coronavirus cabinet was expected Thursday to discuss a possible further easing of lockdown measures.

Israel has recorded close to 300,000 coronavirus infections and over 2,000 deaths, out of a population of nine million.

The rate of new infections, however, is easing, with 2,000 new cases reported on Wednesday, compared to more than 7,500 the day before the flight ban was introduced.

The Three Musketeers at the Kotel
Covid experts: there is another way

Three eminent epidemiologists met in Massachusetts to plan a better response to the pandemic

BY Sunetra Gupta, Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff
Sunetra Gupta

Dr Sunetra Gupta is a professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modelling of infectious

Jay Bhattacharya

Dr Bhattacharya is a professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.

Martin Kulldorff

Dr Kulldorff is a Professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations.

As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical, and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies and recommend an approach we
call Focused Protection.

Coming from both the left and right, and around the world, we have devoted our careers to protecting people. Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.

Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.

Fortunately, our understanding of the virus is growing. We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.

As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity.

The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.

Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent PCR testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside. A comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi-generational households, can be implemented, and is well within the scope and capability of public health professionals.

Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.

Great Barrington, Massachusetts, 4th October 2020

To sign the declaration, follow this link (will be live later today):
www.GBdeclaration.org

.

Yehuda Lave zoom class for Root and Branch on the Knockdown on 10/14/20

The Big Bang wasn't the beginning' says Nobel prize winner Sir Roger Penrose

Penrose claims to have found evidence that (not in his words), "God built worlds and destroyed them."

“The Big Bang was not the beginning,” Sir Roger Penrose said this week, after being awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. “There was something before the Big Bang.”

Speaking to The Telegraph, 89-year-old Penrose, who is based at the University of Oxford, described the conclusions of some of his research that has spanned the past six decades. Back in 1988, he shared the World Prize in physics with Professor Stephen Hawking, since deceased, for their work on black holes, and his prize has been granted now for showing “that the general theory of relativity leads to the formation of black holes.”

Penrose first posited the existence of black holes as an inevitable consequence of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity back in 1964, when he was in his thirties, and nine years after Einstein died. Einstein himself believed that although a mathematical possibility, black holes would not be found to exist physically due to limiting factors, but Penrose managed to prove that gravitational collapse of dense objects into a “singularity” of infinite mass would actually produce what has become known as a black hole, where all known laws of nature cease to apply.

In fact, Penrose goes further and insists that there is “pretty good evidence” that black holes not only exist, but that they also eventually evaporate away, an idea that was first suggested by Hawking. Since it takes eons for a black hole to “die,” the process is not observable, but Penrose says that he has found six “warm” points in the sky that he calls “Hawking Points” which are produced when black holes evaporate.

“We are seeing them. These points are about eight times the diameter of the moon and are slightly warmed-up regions,” he says. “There is pretty good evidence for at least six of these points.” According to Penrose, this tallies with his assertion that “there was something before the Big Bang and that something is what we will have in our future.

“We have a universe that expands and expands … and in this crazy theory of mine, that remote future becomes the Big Bang of another eon,” he continues. “So our Big Bang began with something which was the remote future of a previous eon.”

This is actually not an entirely novel idea, though the belief in a series of “Big Bangs” alternating with “Big Crunches” is highly controversial in the scientific world. What Penrose probably doesn’t know, however, is that the idea has been around not for decades but for millennia; the Midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 3:7) states clearly that, “God built worlds and destroyed them,” before creating the world in which we live.

Turning Britain and America into Salem

As the West blows up its own moral values, Jews are at risk of becoming a speck amidst the rubble.

(October 8, 2020 / JNS) Much has been written about left-wing anti-Semitism and the pernicious role played by the universities in fomenting it.

Rather less has been written about the anti-Semitism perpetrated by radical black groups, such as Nation of Islam or Black Lives Matter, which finds routine and largely unremarked expression among rappers, for example, and has infiltrated parts of the black community.

There has been little discussion of the linkage between anti-white and anti-Jewish feeling. And there’s been virtually no acknowledgement of the way in which this whole toxic train of thought has been unwittingly institutionalized by governments and other official bodies.

Western governments, companies and institutions are in large measure currently enforcing training in “unconscious bias” and “diversity.”

The ostensible aim is to promote tolerance and inclusion. In fact, such training teaches people to hate. It tells them that both their country and Western society in general are hateful because they are structurally prejudiced against black people; and if these trainees are white, it tells them they are racist and teaches them to hate themselves.

Not only is all of this a terrible smear on the overwhelming majority who are decent people. It is racial prejudice against white people. It damns an entire ethnicity on the basis of the color of people’s skin.

Worse still, “unconscious bias” means not only that everyone is a racial bigot even if they don’t consciously think in those terms; but also that, if they say they aren’t prejudiced, this merely proves that they are. This is Soviet-style totalitarian doublethink.

This pernicious development owes its origins to critical race theory, which grew up in the universities in the 1970s and 1980s alongside other radical doctrines such as women’s studies and “queer” studies. These are all aspects of identity politics and victim culture, whose aim is the overthrow of core Western values.

Spawned by Marxist analysis, this doctrine divides society into groups defined by power and powerlessness. It accuses the former of oppression, while bestowing upon the latter impunity for their actions. Accordingly, it has long been driving university humanities departments off the intellectual and moral rails.

So it comes as no surprise that critical race theory is also inherently anti-Jew, the bigotry that is the infallible marker of moral and rational disintegration.

Its mantra is that white skin is the hallmark of racist abuse of power. Then it flips that to say that all in positions of power are white. So Jews are considered white oppressors because they are seen as powerful.

Of course, many Jews are brown-skinned, and a number are black. But Jews are deemed to be white because they are seen as powerful, capitalist and rich—classic anti-Semitic stereotyping.

So this “anti-racist” anti-Semitism is not merely caused by left-wingers viewing Israel falsely as a colonialist oppressor. This is anti-Semitism before Israel even enters the equation, and is the type of Jew-hatred that goes back centuries.

Of course, these “anti-racists” cannot possibly admit they are anti-Jew. After all, the Jews are the world’s most persecuted and unambiguous victims, the historic targets not just of bigotry, oppression and slavery but of genocide.

So this presents an intolerable contradiction in the minds of “diversity” acolytes. As a result, they minimize Jewish suffering—or even, preposterously, try to turn it into an adjunct of oppressive white power.

So some deny the Holocaust; or claim that Anne Frank is only regarded as a victim because she was white; or that “the Holocaust is given more historical weight than other genocides” because Ashkenazi Jews are white.

And for all this, these people are given a free pass. The anti-Semitism of critical race theory is strenuously denied by its proponents and ignored by everyone else.

The Harvard University law professor Derrick Bell, who is regarded as the founding father of the doctrine, wrote in 1992 that the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan was perhaps the best example of a black man “able to ‘tell it like it is’ regarding who is responsible for racism in this country.” This was the same Farrakhan who refers to “the Satanic Jews that control everything and mostly everybody.”

It’s bad enough that the universities and left-wing politics have been captured by this sinister dogma. But now, with widespread uncritical acclaim in the west for Black Lives Matter and its agenda, critical race theory has been elevated to a wholly different level.

Government agencies, businesses, schools and other institutions are now systematically indoctrinating people into this anti-white thinking. As a result, the destruction of society’s moral compass is being institutionalized.

President Donald Trump has tried to fight back. Last month, he issued an executive order prohibiting federal funding of “divisive concepts” in any workplace training within federal agencies or by private contractors to the federal government. Nine such concepts were listed, including the idea that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”

It was a brave and necessary move. But will the withdrawal of federal funding succeed in reversing such a profound cultural capture? And if Joe Biden wins the presidency, we can expect to see this executive order dropped, and anti-white bigotry elevated still further into an unchallengeable and mandatory doctrine.

It’s already become an inquisition that’s gone viral. In America, employees have had to attend sessions where they are told ‘“virtually all white people contribute to racism” or where they are required to say they “benefit from racism.”

In Britain, the chief librarian of the British Library has claimed that “racism is a creation of white people.” One of parliament’s “equality networks” has created a “digital wall” where staff can “acknowledge their privilege.” One such confession read: “I am a white man and from that privileged position I now see that I can’t ever fully understand the relentless impact of racism.”

Those promulgating such indoctrination are well-meaning people who want to combat racial prejudice. They’d be baffled by the suggestion that they are actually perpetrating it. They’d undoubtedly be horrified at the idea that they might be contributing to anti-Jewish prejudice. Indeed, some of those who have signed up to all this are themselves Jews.

Unfortunately, however, they are useful idiots. They don’t understand the agenda that lies behind their efforts. They don’t realize they are turning Britain and America into Salem.

And that’s because they themselves have internalized the belief in white guilt over colonialist oppression—a guilt so strong they feel the need to make reparations by denouncing their own culture and ethnicity for its supposedly unique evil.

Yet clearly, they have not similarly internalized guilt for the way their culture has treated the Jewish people over the centuries. They aren’t providing workplace training in structural antisemitism. They aren’t tearing down statues of historic anti-Semites. They aren’t requiring confessions of unconscious bias against the Jews.

Nor should they do so. And no one should deny the West’s history of colonialism and slavery.

But colonialism and slavery were practiced in other cultures—and still are. The diversity acolytes perversely focus their attack only on the west over the wrongs it did to darker-skinned people, all the time ignoring their culture’s own historic persecution of the Jews—and are now adopting a doctrine that targets them once again.

The Jews are often said to serve as the canaries in the coal mine. But now, the mine is in the process of blowing itself up—and the Jews may soon be just a speck amidst the rubble.

Melanie Phillips, a British journalist, broadcaster and author, writes a weekly column for JNS. Currently a columnist for “The Times of London,” her personal and political memoir, “Guardian Angel,” has been published by Bombardier, which also published her first novel, “The Legacy,” in 2018. Go to melaniephillips.substack.com to access her work.

The Great Barrington Declaration

The Great Barrington Declaration – As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.

Coming from both the left and right, and around the world, we have devoted our careers to protecting people. Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.

Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.

Fortunately, our understanding of the virus is growing. We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.

As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity.

The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.

Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent PCR testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside. A comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi-generational households, can be implemented, and is well within the scope and capability of public health professionals.

Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.

On October 4, 2020, this declaration was authored and signed in Great Barrington, United States, by:

Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations.

Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.

Sign the Declaration

Co-signers

Medical and Public Health Scientists and Medical Practitioners

Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, physician, epidemiologist and public policy expert at the Veterans Administration, USA

Dr. Stephen Bremner,professor of medical statistics, University of Sussex, England

Dr. Anthony J Brookes, professor of genetics, University of Leicester, England

Dr. Helen Colhoun, ,professor of medical informatics and epidemiology, and public health physician, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

Dr. Angus Dalgleish, oncologist, infectious disease expert and professor, St. George’s Hospital Medical School, University of London, England

Dr. Sylvia Fogel, autism expert and psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and instructor at Harvard Medical School, USA

Dr. Eitan Friedman, professor of medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel

Dr. Uri Gavish, biomedical consultant, Israel

Dr. Motti Gerlic, professor of clinical microbiology and immunology, Tel Aviv University, Israel

Dr. Gabriela Gomes, mathematician studying infectious disease epidemiology, professor, University of Strathclyde, Scotland

Dr. Mike Hulme, professor of human geography, University of Cambridge, England

Dr. Michael Jackson, research fellow, School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury, New Zealand

Dr. Annie Janvier, professor of pediatrics and clinical ethics, Université de Montréal and Sainte-Justine University Medical Centre, Canada

Dr. David Katz, physician and president, True Health Initiative, and founder of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, USA

Dr. Andrius Kavaliunas, epidemiologist and assistant professor at Karolinska Institute, Sweden

Dr. Laura Lazzeroni, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and of biomedical data science, Stanford University Medical School, USA

Dr. Michael Levitt, biophysicist and professor of structural biology, Stanford University, USA.
Recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Dr. David Livermore, microbiologist, infectious disease epidemiologist and professor, University of East Anglia, England

Dr. Jonas Ludvigsson, pediatrician, epidemiologist and professor at Karolinska Institute and senior physician at Örebro University Hospital, Sweden

Dr. Paul McKeigue, physician, disease modeler and professor of epidemiology and public health, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

Dr. Cody Meissner, professor of pediatrics, expert on vaccine development, efficacy, and safety. Tufts University School of Medicine, USA

Dr. Ariel Munitz, professor of clinical microbiology and immunology, Tel Aviv University, Israel

Dr. Yaz Gulnur Muradoglu, professor of finance, director of the Behavioural Finance Working Group, Queen Mary University of London, England

Dr. Partha P. Majumder, professor and founder of the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics, Kalyani, India

Dr. Udi Qimron, professor of clinical microbiology and immunology, Tel Aviv University, Israel

Dr. Matthew Ratcliffe, professor of philosophy, specializing in philosophy of mental health, University of York, England

Dr. Mario Recker, malaria researcher and associate professor, University of Exeter, England

Dr. Eyal Shahar, physician, epidemiologist and professor (emeritus) of public health, University of Arizona, USA

Dr. Karol Sikora, physician, oncologist, and professor of medicine at the University of Buckingham, England

Dr. Matthew Strauss, critical care physician and assistant professor of medicine, Queen’s University, Canada

Dr. Rodney Sturdivant, infectious disease scientist and associate professor of biostatistics, Baylor University, USA

Dr. Simon Thornley, epidemiologist and biostatistician, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Dr. Ellen Townsend, professor of psychology, head of the Self-Harm Research Group, University of Nottingham, England

Dr. Lisa White, professor of modelling and epidemiology, Oxford University, England

Dr. Simon Wood, biostatistician and professor, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

Major Retail Chains to Open in Defiance of Government Lockdown

By Hana Levi Julian - 26 Tishri 5781 – October 14, 2020


Major retail establishments across Israel say they will open for business next Sunday in defiance of the government lockdown.

The Association of Retail, Fashion and Cafe Chains (ARFCC) in Israel, representing 400 chains that employ some 300,000 workers made the announcement on Wednesday. Approximately 6,300 shops in total, comprising 35 percent of the organization’s membership, are expected to join the initiative.

Azrieli and Ofer-run shopping malls, however, are not included among those that plan to open.

The association made the decision to support smaller, independent business owners who had already made a similar decision last week out of economic desperation to survive.

“We’re drowning. We can’t breathe,” the association said. “It’s been proven that trade doesn’t spread [the virus]. It’s time to open!”

The ARFCC added, however, that its member establishments will remain closed in cities and towns that fall under the Health Ministry’s “red code” designation, such as Elad, Ashdod, Beit Shemesh, Beit Illit, Bnei Brak, Or Yehuda, Ofakim and select neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Kiryat Malachi, Rechasim and Ramle.

See you on Sunday bli neder-Shabbat Shalom Shabbat B'reishit

We need Moshiach now

Love Yehuda Lave

Yehuda Lave, Spirtiual Advisor and Counselor

Jerusalem, Jerusalem
 Israel

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