Posted on 06/02/2023 6:16:35 PM PDT by lightman
It was common in the Middle Ages for Jews to get the blame for the spreading of disease. In the 14th century, Jews were accused of poisoning wells, infecting the water with something terrible that was then transferred to the whole community.
There was of course never one shred of evidence of this. The Black Death had nothing to do with the Jews—it was a bacterial infection transferred through many sources—but they caught the blame anyway. Indeed, that’s where we get the phrase “poisoning the well.” It has anti-Semitic connotations in history.
Scapegoating Jews is a habit with ancient origins. It is an ominous sign and a terrible omen of what is to follow. Indeed, the treatment of the Jews in any society is a “canary in a coal mine.” When they are unjustly blamed for social ills, nothing good follows. We know this from all experience dating to the ancient world.
Nonetheless, at the very outset of the big virus, fully two weeks before the government announced 15 Days to Flatten the Curve, the New York Times said that the right way to handle the coronavirus was to “go Medieval on it.” That was Feb. 28, 2020 and the author was their lead virus reporter Donald G. McNeil. This was the very first indication in that grim season that something was about to go very wrong.
To go “medieval” on a virus not only involves bad virology such as the miasma theory of disease spread, which the United States did indeed adopt. It was as if the whole of 20th-century scientific understanding just went out the window.
It also meant no modern medical care, which we also did by intubating patients to their deaths. We also got rid of dentistry: it was nearly impossible to get an appointment anywhere in the country for about six weeks. And then of course, as part of going Medieval, the attacks on the Jews began.
As a precondition of the attack, please recall that governments all over the country forbid in-person community religious worship. They shut down churches, chapels, synagogues, temples, everything, all in the name of disease control. The rights won from half a millennium of experience were thrown out the window by secular states.
Most institutions and groups complied. Some did not. That’s when the attacks began.
The center of Jewish resistance was of course the boroughs in New York City (Queens and The Bronx) with a high concentration of Orthodox Jews, particularly the Hasidim and Haredim. The attacks that began in May emanated from both the Governor’s office and the Mayor’s office, happily echoed for a full year of breathless reporting from the New York Times. They sent reporters out to discover and report unapproved gatherings of Jews and filed reports such as this one from Nov. 24, 2020:
“Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews gathered to celebrate a wedding inside a cavernous hall in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood earlier this month, dancing and singing with hardly a mask in sight. The wedding was meticulously planned, and so were efforts to conceal it from the authorities, who said that the organizers would be fined $15,000 for violating public health restrictions.”
How dare they dance and sing without masks!
Moshe Krakowski of the Tablet has finally documented the outrage of scapegoating Jews in a wonderful piece. He points out that “In April of 2020, [Bill] de Blasio issued a special ‘message to the Jewish community’ threatening that ‘the time for warnings has passed’ and indicated that he would be dispatching the police to ‘arrest those who gather in large groups.’ Jews were the only one of the city’s many ethnic groups whom de Blasio singled out for public condemnation.”
And yet a few months later, the mayor was defending BLM protestors and their right to gather.
The New York Daily News blasted away at Jews: “The ultra-Orthodox do not always share their fellow citizens’ visions for civil society … tolerance, cooperation and pluralism take a back seat to Jewish exceptionalism.”
Oh, we see now. Jews are the other, the noncompliant, the enemy amongst us. Where have we heard that before?
Anthony Fauci got in on the act; “when vaccinations get below that number you start to see outbreaks like we saw some time ago in the NYC area with Hasidic Jewish people who were not getting vaccinated.”
In the same way, the New York Times went after Jews in Israel as disease spreaders. The Haredi have a “deep distrust of state authority, ignorance of the health risks … and a zealous devotion to a way of life centered on communal activity.” Meanwhile, Andrew Cuomo’s “cluster zones” for quarantine specifically targeted Jews in New York.
Early on, Cuomo himself singled out Jews. “I understand religious gatherings, I understand the Jewish Orthodox community …. But now is not the time for large religious gatherings. We’ve paid this price already. We’ve learned this lesson.”
Actually, the real lesson we have learned is that secular leaders who forcibly prevent religious people from practicing their faith are despots and dangerous. That reality didn’t stop all the leaders in the United States from targeting people of faith and scapegoating their traditions for disease spread.
All of this required that many Jews had to hide weddings and funerals from the hounds of government and media for the better part of two years. It seems astonishing to consider that this happened. Many decades of “never again” education and Holocaust museums around the world seemed not to have any effect when it came down to it.
Fortunately, some Jewish groups finally sued for their rights.
And it wasn’t just the Jews. Christian communities that gathered were targeted early on in the pandemic. I can recall the hysterical propaganda about church choirs in Texas and how the media treated them all as disease spreaders. It began almost right away after lockdowns, and continued for a full year. “Is it safe to sing in church?” asked Religion News in May of 2021.
Governments arrested people, including a state Senator, for singing hymns even outside!
Let’s be clear about the Jewish and Christian view toward singing. It stems from a deep religious conviction. When God created Adam, God gave him life by breathing into him. So our very breath is a gift from God. When we sing praises to God, we are giving that gift back to God in thanksgiving. That’s why the book that Jews and Christian shared most in common is the collected Psalms of David.
Any government at any time that bans ritual singing by a religious group is attacking a core belief and the religion itself. It’s literally demonic. And yet it went on in government and media circles for a year or longer, and without any evidence that singing was deadly or otherwise detrimental to community health. Hardly anyone even bothered standing up for the rights of people in these times.
Ironically, it was within and from these communities of faith that the first real glimpses of helpful therapeutics came. Their distrust of the secular authorities led them to eschew conventional protocols like ventilation and instead experiment with repurposed therapeutics. That’s how Dr. Vladimir Zelenko became such a legend. But even in his death from cancer, the vicious New York Times couldn’t resist another attack. Its obit was titled “Vladimir Zelenko, 48, Dies; Promoted an Unfounded Covid Treatment.”
There is a larger point about religious communities and loyalties. The COVID response was supposed to involve “the whole of government” and the “whole of society” but what about those who have loyalties to God first and must obey his commands? The expectation was that they would give in. Most did. But some did not: many Orthodox Jews, the Amish, traditionalist Catholics, fundamentalist Mormons, and, later, evangelicals. Their faith protected them against the pseudo-science of the medical and secular elites. In the end, faith led the dissidents to a better science too.
These are not the views of a people ready to comply with every cockamamie edict from Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). And good for them. After long experience, religions have codified this suspicion and even sang about it. The Psalmist expresses the attitude perfectly: “Princes persecute me without a cause, but my heart stands in awe of your word.” The Psalmist also says: “He shall cut off the spirit of princes: he is terrible to the kings of the earth.”
Take note from recent experience. The first attacked were passionate adherents of the Jewish faith. And this happened over an extended period of time with nary a raised eyebrow from anyone in the mainstream press. Indeed, too many Jewish leaders themselves let the whole thing slide.
Too many complied and not enough defied. Certainly not enough people spoke out as the media and governments “went Medieval” and blamed the Jews for spreading disease.
As they say, never again!
Views expressed in this article are the o
Meh...jews vote overwhelming democrat.
Enjoy.
Are the Hasidim anti vax ?
…….
Maybe if Jews STOP VOTING DEMOCRAT they won’t be scapegoated. Just a thought.
Good article, seems like one of humanity’s default settings
How does the author explain the fascism carried out by the Israeli government towards the “unvaxed”?
The Hasidic community votes Republican. That is why they are being targetted. If they gave more to the Democrats, they wouldn’t be blamed as much.
Yeah. If the Jews just stop being Jews people would like them.
Hasidim and Hareidim are made up of many different groups who are used to their own independence and are almost impervious to pop culture and governments they believe hostile.
Most of the leading rabbis strong endorsed ‘vaxxing’, but a few did not, and many of the followers of most of the rabbis independently avoided the shots.
There are around 100,000 Hasidic Jews around the NYC area. Probably a little less than that number of Hareidim.
Thank you .
…
Hasidim vote GOP.
He shall cut off the spirit of princes: he is terrible to the kings of the earth. —Psalms 76:12
Secular Jews, mostly; but not these Jews. This man is writing about the large Orthodox communities in New York's outer boroughs who are observant of their Bible (the Old Testament) and religious practices. They voted for Trump.
At gab.com there are constant attacks against Jewish people. The owner of the site is one of those that post derogatory remarks.
Bttt.
5.56mm
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