"No man among you may mislead his fellowman, and you shall fear your G-d. Behar 25:17
This article is very long and thorough, because it has to be. I hope this will not deter you from reading it in full.
There are countless rabbis, community leaders, and influencers who pushed the Covid dogma. They did not do this because they independently studied the matter with an open mind and their honest, unbiased conclusion was that the Covid protocol was scientifically sound, the most appropriate option, and it was mandated by the Torah. The vast majority of them were serving as paid celebrity spokesmen, just doing their job, just following orders, and parroting their lines from others who were parroting the lines, which were fed to them by those who butter their bread.
They were not teachers; they were mouthpieces. They were like the false prophets of old, who sold their souls to dine at the king’s table, or for much less. There is nothing new under the sun.
Asher Weiss — I will not debase the title any more than it has already been debased by calling him a rabbi — was one of the earliest and most prominent Jewish clergymen to push the Covid shots, and he did so emphatically. Watch this from the end of this viral video of his from December 17, 2020:
Once again I will remind people that, according to Chazal, one who is megaleh panim b’Torah shelo k’halacha, one who distorts the Torah to arrive at conclusions that contradict Jewish law, loses his share in the world to come — even if he has Torah and good deeds under his belt (Avos 3:11).
Based on this and much more, if Asher Weiss offered me his share in the world to come for a nickel, I would turn him down. I’d rather have the nickel.
Before continuing, I will remind everyone that Weiss admitted on camera that he serves as a consultant for the Shabak. You know, the same shadowy state intelligence agency that infiltrates Jewish communities in Israel, conducts false flag operations, and brutally tortured Amiram ben Uliel for 17 days until he confessed to a crime he didn’t commit. That Shabak.
They consult with Asher Weiss. For “psak and guidance”.
Since when does the Shabak care about halacha? What sort of “guidance” might Weiss be giving them? Perhaps how to better infiltrate religious communities? Can you come up with a more plausible answer?
Did Weiss use his connections to protest their use of torture? Don’t be silly.
Throughout the Covid era Weiss repeatedly doubled down on masks, lockdowns, and shots, using extreme rhetoric against those who defied instructions.
I documented much of his activity during this time, and called him out for the numerous ways he misled the public with Torah sources cherry-picked, taken out of context, and misapplied, plus doublespeak and other forms of deception. I will provide numerous links at the end of this article to substantiate these harsh claims. I urge readers to study all the information, share it, discuss it, and draw appropriate conclusions.
One cannot claim that Asher Weiss himself was misled, uninformed, or was being yashar — straight — with the public. Like the Mengeles for whom he works, he leveraged his knowledge, oratory skills, position of authority, and facade of greatness to manipulate his listeners and stifle critical questions.
In 2023 I approached Weiss and asked him if he had anything to say to the many people who were harmed by the shots he demanded they take and emphatically declared were safe. He refused to speak about it — “not right now” — and when I persisted, he made a menacing move at me, and one of his cronies assaulted me.
Watch it on Rumble here or below below:
The fact that Chemed organizers took it for granted that the establishment got something wrong with Covid speaks volumes about how unreasonable it is to deny and deflect anymore, yet Weiss continues to do just that.
Furthermore, if there were ever a “safe place” for Weiss to address this topic, where he is held in the highest esteem, where everyone believes in vaccines and The Science™, this was it. For Weiss to weasel out of addressing the matter even there, with such a desperately poor excuse that gaslights his most loyal followers, should make it clear that he has no intention of addressing critical questions about his Covid rulings from anyone, anywhere, ever.
2:07 — Weiss changes the subject and laments the fact that many people developed a mistrust of the medical establishment and “conventional” remedies and approaches, opting for alternative ideas and cures. He will repeat this throughout his speech, yet at no time does he explore why that happened.
It would behoove people of integrity to perform introspection and try to determine why so many people who had always trusted them, and who wanted to trust them, no longer do.
The most logical explanation for why this happened is not that they all went insane and decided a few fringe lunatics who were being censored made more sense than everything and everyone they ever believed in and wanted to believe in.
No, the most logical explanation for why people stopped trusting the medical establishment is because they found the medical establishment untrustworthy.
It would further behoove people of integrity to reach out to these people with sincerity and humility, to be open and honest about where the establishment went wrong, to hold corrupt people accountable, and to earn back people’s trust not by promoting their authority and “expertise”, but by actually being trustworthy.
Of course, Asher Weiss proceeds to do none of these things. He does the opposite.
For the next 16 minutes he bloviates about the Torah granting doctors the right to heal, which gives sick people the obligation to go to doctors, which grants doctors authority. What Weiss is really doing here is engaging in a sleight of hand. This little drasha, aside from being a distraction, is a ploy to reinforce his rabbinic credibility and authority by citing a bunch of sources and engaging in some pilpul.
He did the same thing in his initial Covid presentation that made such an impact. Instead of talking about the actual matter at hand, he bloviated for over 45 minutes about smallpox and polio, before emphatically urging everyone to take the Covid shots. His speech can be summarized like this:
Smallpox very bad, smallpox vaccine very good, polio very bad, polio vaccine very good. Therefore, Covid vaccine also very good.
Interestingly, Weiss did not treat smallpox and polio as mere “historical events”, a non-halachic discussion, but as a basis for his “halachic” rulings about Covid.
Leaving aside the claims about earlier vaccines saving the world, which are highly disputable, the logical fallacy of pushing the Covid shots based on presumptions about other vaccines is as wide as the Grand Canyon. Nevertheless, Weiss banked on listeners being so wowed by his drasha on something far from the heart of the matter that they would accept his Covid ruling without question. And they did.
But the sleight of hand doesn’t end there. What he cites about doctors is cherry-picked and one-sided. He paints a distorted picture that grossly exaggerates the level of trust given to “establishment” doctors and the degree of authority they have.
He does not discuss the possibility of the establishment being corrupted at the top, with doctors on the ground being forced to just follow orders or lose their license, even if they know better or have serious doubts.
He does not discuss the reality of drug corporations wielding massive influence over medical education and practice.
He does not discuss the reality of many doctors having little actual knowledge and wisdom, instead following a recipe and asking as if they know how to cook.
He does not discuss the bribery in so many forms. He does not note that trust is predicated in large part on accountability, which existed only for doctors who expressed independent voices against the Covid narrative, not for those who pushed the shots or even for the companies that produced them — thus rendering the latter completely untrustworthy according to halacha.
He does not discuss the extreme skepticism Chazal and our poskim expressed about doctors, from the earliest times until Rabbi Moshe Feinstein in the previous generation, despite granting them a limited degree of authority under specific circumstances. (I wrote many articles about this, which only scratch the surface, and will share some links at the end.)
No, Weiss spent 16 minutes showing off his “scholarship” and making a perverted argument that we should blindly submit to the medical establishment.
The fact that Asher Weiss can cite many Torah sources and expound on them does make him righteous or trustworthy; it makes him more dangerous.
18:14 — Weiss asserts that medicine needs to be proven and logical, something we can explain and understand.
Those Covid shots were far from proven when Weiss jabbed his finger in your face and bellowed that they were safe. The notion that an injection would teach your body to produce spike proteins that were bad for it, which wouldn’t go where they weren’t supposed to, which your body would destroy and remember for the future, and then your body would stop producing them, was far from proven and quite a dubious sales pitch, besides.
But Weiss doesn’t go there, of course. Instead, he uses this assertion as a springboard to attack “alternative medicine”. You know, medicine that comes from nature, and knowledge that has been passed down from generation to generation, but largely muscled out by artificial, corporate medicine whose overlords branded “conventional”.
19:42 — Weiss takes it a step further by equating “conventional” medicine with natural remedies, and “alternative” medicine with segulos, mystical remedies such as amulets.
If your blood is not boiling by now, you should be disturbed that you are so desensitized. Hashem wants you to be outraged by such evil.
19:52 — Is it a proven treatment or not? Is it reliable based on our experience?
Were the Covid shots you pushed so emphatically?
20:11 — Weiss cherry-picks a few words from the Rema: “You only administer a medicine if it is known to be effective or if a mumcheh [expert] recommends it.”
This is hardly a black and white rule, with nothing else to say on the subject, but Weiss deviously takes these words way out of context:
“Which means, might be a new treatment, a new procedure, a new medicine that we are not really aware of.”
The Rema was referring to treating sick people in a sensible, responsible fashion. If no proven treatment is available, and the situation calls for it, we may need to rely on an expert recommendation for a treatment that we are not familiar with.
The Rema was most certainly not referring to injecting billions of healthy people with innovative, unproven, highly suspicious Covid shots because “experts” recommended it.
Of course, as far as Weiss is concerned, the same principle of trusting experts does not apply to experts who defy the establishment Weiss serves.
23:25 — Weiss advises “cancer patients, especially those who are desperately ill, to try anything, but not at the expense of conventional medicine that was proven to be helpful…proven statistically to be helpful, and the people that administer this medicine are reliable people and they bear consequences for wrongdoing.”
If you lie persistently and confidently from a position of authority, you can get people to believe anything.
23:58 — “With conventional medicine you don’t know who are the charlatans and who are the serious ones and probably there are serious ones. Most of this stuff was not statistically proven and many of these remedies we don't really have a clear explanation how they work.”
He meant to say unconventional medicine. What a delicious Freudian slip.
Meanwhile, Weiss continues to lump everything outside the establishment in one basket, and equate it with segulos, amulets, and other mystical, inexplicable treatments. Hence, even if some of them work some of the time, we really shouldn’t be going there — and never in place of “conventional” medicine:
25:09 — “So alternative medicine, I don’t want to say is illegitimate, but it should never be taken instead of conventional medicine.”
Really, never?
Weiss proceeds to wax nostalgic about the Covid era, particularly when people were suffering the most.
26:01 — “I think Covid stage one brought out the best in us. There was a feeling of Kol Yisrael Areivim Zeh Lazeh, people cared about one another. We locked ourselves in our homes. We closed shuls. The young, the healthy, the vibrant understood that they must limit activities to care for the elderly, for the feeble, for the ill. It was a very special atmosphere.”
Ah, the good old days. Isn’t that how you remember them?
I remember, among other things, elderly people in nursing homes and hospitals being refused visitors, deteriorating and dying alone.
It was definitely a “special atmosphere”, but, then again, so were the ghettos and concentration camps, which also brought out the best in some people.
26:33 — “And then at some stage everything fell apart and our society was torn about and unraveled and it brought out so much machlokes [division] and so much strife and so much pegiah b’chvod haTorah [damage to the honor of Torah].”
Weiss is not referring to charlatans like himself causing the strife with divisive rhetoric and damaging the honor of the Torah by misrepresenting it. He is referring to those who ceased obeying the high priests of Covid.
He then makes an unintelligible rambling analogy to the seven years of plenty in Egypt preceding the years of famine before stating this:
27:43 — “And one of the, I think, problematic things of the period of Covid was in many circles in our communities that didn't trust the medical establishment. But it caused a total breakdown and a total mistrust in medicine, in doctors and whatever doctors say, whatever they represent. These insane conspiracy theories — and I really want to say insane, because that is the way I see it — and it caused a total breakdown of trust. Trust we always had since Chazal said “诪讻讗谉 砖谞讬转谞讛 专砖讜转 诇专讜驻讗 诇专驻讗讜转” [from here the doctor is given the right to heal].”
Weiss does not venture to explain how a fringe minority of people with insane ideas caused a total breakdown and total mistrust in medicine in doctors, especially in contravention of Chazal and thousands of years of supposed “trust we always had.” As always, he relies on rhetoric and deception to swerve around the elephant in the room.
28:43 — “No profession is clean from charlatans. But generally speaking we need to trust medicine because otherwise we are totally lost. And it goes against 诪讻讗谉 砖谞讬转谞讛 专砖讜转 诇专讜驻讗 诇专驻讗讜转. That means you trust your doctor.”
No, snake, it means a doctor has permission to properly treat sick people, not poison healthy people or take over society.
For the next few minutes Weiss bloviates more about this lack of trust, the phenomenon of cancer patients who won’t go for radiation and chemotherapy, and parents who won’t give their children the measles shot, before returning to his favorite scare tactic:
32:20 — “We don’t want to go back where we were 100 and 200 and 300 years ago. Smallpox wiped out 50% of the population in Europe! Just think what 50% means. Many gedolei Yisrael died from smallpox, from cholera. I remember polio when I was a young kid. So many people were in wheelchairs, couldn't move their legs. And these diseases didn't go away because someone wrote a kemiah [amulet]. Vaccines took away these diseases.”
And a fat man came down your chimney with presents.
Weiss concludes with one final distortion of the Torah:
35:53 — The concept of shomer pesa’im Hashem, that God watches over those who behave with simple innocence, only applies to those who blindly follow instructions and guidance of establishment doctors, no matter how much or little they know.
“So you’re always on the safer side even in Torah hashkafa and in Halachic hashkafa by following the rules, the attitudes, the approaches, the recommendations, the guidance of the medical establishment and of doctors of our communities.”
Weiss distorted this concept as well in his finger-jabbing Covid video from 2020. Safe and effective indeed. Five days later I explained the actual Torah perspective in my article “‘God Watches Over Fools’ Explained”.
It is high time we stopped tolerating charlatans, frauds, false prophets, sold-out creeps, hocus-pocus rabbis, and Erev Rav moles in our communities. It is high time we stopped showing them deference, keeping silent, and allowing them to bring spiritual and physical harm on our people. It is high time we stopped making excuses, hiding behind buzzwords like achdus and avoiding machlokes to cover for cowardice and apathy.
Share this and speak out.
Another perspective [wonder if they kept the Shabbos?]
* * * * *
The recent historic proclamation builds on a great American tradition of respecting and celebrating Shabbat as a source of spiritual uplift.
President Trump’s remarkable proclamation on May 4th in honor of Jewish Heritage Month is the first time an American president has publicly encouraged Jews to observe Shabbat.
“In special honor of 250 glorious years of American independence and on the weekend of Rededicate 250 — a national jubilee of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving — Jewish Americans are encouraged to observe a national Sabbath,” the President stated.
Even more remarkably, he suggested that all Americans be inspired by the Jewish day of rest. “From sundown on May 15 to nightfall on May 16, friends, families, and communities of all backgrounds,” the proclamation continues, “may come together in gratitude for our great Nation. This day will recognize the sacred Jewish tradition of setting aside time for rest, reflection, and gratitude to the Almighty.”
[he didn’t say to “keep” Shabbos like the Jews, but “rest, reflection, and gratitude to the Almighty”. It means Christians and Jews in their own way”]
While this presidential-level public encouragement of Shabbat observance is a first, Jews have been observing the seventh day’s holiness since the birth of the American Republic, and that fealty to our faith has helped encourage all Americans to live up to our nation’s founding ideals.
Jonas Phillips (1736—1803), a proud patriot, Revolutionary War veteran, and merchant based in New York and Philadelphia, was summoned to court in April of 1793. The court records note that: “In this cause (which was tried on Saturday, the 5th of April), the defendant offered Jonas Phillips, a Jew, as a witness; but he refused to be sworn, because it was his Sabbath. The court, therefore, fined him 10 pounds; but the defendant, afterwards, waiving the benefit of his testimony, he was discharged from the fine.”
Director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center Judge Michael McConnell has called this case, Stansbury vs. Marks, the “first recorded case raising free exercise issues following the adoption of the first amendment.” The proudly Jewish Phillips, in his refusal to violate the Shabbat, demonstrated in America’s earliest years how the country stands in respect of religious diversity and freedom.
In another essay he reflected how keeping the Sabbath as an example of how God is worshipped “not with the shouts of fanaticism, nor the fretful penances of temporal authority - not as dealing damnation to one sect and blessings to others - not as crushing one portion of [H]is creation and elevating another: but as a just and righteous God.”
Later, during the Civil War, Bernhard Behrend, of Narrowsburg, Sullivan County N.Y. wrote to President Lincoln requesting that his son, fighting for the Union, be allowed to observe the Jewish day of rest. Behrend’s letter, dated December 4, 1862, begins by noting that “By your order of the 16th day of November, 1862, you recommend that the officers and men of the army shall observe the Sabbath and do no work on Sunday, because we are a Christian people.” “But,” Behrend continued, “according to the Declaration of Independence and according to the constitution of the United States, the people of the United States is not a Christian people, but a free, sovereign people with equal rights, and each and every citizen of the United States has the right and liberty to live according to his own consciousness in religious matters, and no one religious denomination, be it a majority or minority of the people, can have a privilege before the other under this our beloved constitution.”
As such, the father argued on behalf of his child as follows:
“I gave my consent to my son, who was yet a minor, that he should enlist in the United States army; I thought it was his duty, and I gave him my advice to fulfill his duty as a good citizen, and he has done so. At the same time I taught him also to observe the Sabbath on Saturday, when it would not hinder him from fulfilling his duty in the army. Now I do not want that he shall be dragged either to the stake or the church to observe the Sunday as a Sabbath. Your Excellency will observe in this my writing that I am not very well versed in the English language, and if there should be found a word which is not right, pardon it, and never such a word shall be construed so as if I would offend your Excellency or the people; for I love my country, the Constitution, and the Union, and I try to be always a loyal citizen.”
While there is no record of Lincoln ever responding to Bernhard Behrend’s letter, he did later issue a general order permitting Jewish soldiers to be furloughed during their Holy Days.
Of course, countless Jewish Americans struggled to provide for their families and lost jobs that demanded they work on the day of rest. But following the rise of the modern civil rights movement, most conventional American workplaces understand and respect its observance.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires employers to “make reasonable accommodations for an applicant or employee whose sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance conflicts with a work requirement, unless providing the accommodation would create an undue hardship for the employer.”
The 20th century’s most famous Shabbat-observing political figure was Joseph Lieberman. Early in his career, as a Connecticut state senator, a budget stalemate was broken late Friday in 1971. At the direction of Majority Leader Ed Caldwell, the chamber delayed the vote, observed the day of rest, and passed the budget on Saturday night. The next day’s local paper carried the headline: “Butch Caldwell and the Sundown Kid.” Lieberman, who served a distinguished career in the Senate, would later come within 537 votes of the vice presidency in the presidential 2000 election.
In 2011, Lieberman authored The Gift of Rest: Rediscovering the Beauty of the Sabbath, noting its crucial importance in our digitally-infused age. “Every generation has its own pharaoh and its own slave masters uniquely based on the culture of the time,” he wrote. “Our pharaoh may be the electronic devices—computers, televisions, iPhones—that mesmerize us, dominating hour after hour of our lives…Too often they show us an electronic alternative reality full of negativity, trivia, or degradation. From all this, the Sabbath offers to free us for a twenty-four-hour period.”
Just a few months ago, I myself was lucky enough to speak at the White House about how Jewish ideas have inspired America. Not only did the organizers of the event accommodate my request to have the panel on which I spoke be at a time that would allow me to observe Shabbat in a local community, as I left the White House in the late afternoon, someone walking in saw my kippah and said “Have a good Shabbos!”
The recent proclamation, then, while undoubtedly historic, builds on a great American tradition of respecting, accommodating and celebrating the seventh day as a source of spiritual uplift.
https://aish.com/trumps-shabbat-proclamation-and-americas-founding-promise/
The Hebrew Bible played a major role in the creation of the United States and its democracy.
The creation of the United States of America represented a watershed moment in world history. Unlike other countries where democracy evolved over a period of hundreds of years, the United States was the first country to be created, from its inception, as a democracy. And the Bible – and Jewish values – played a major role in this process.
Many of the earliest "pilgrims" who settled the "New England" of America in early 17th century were Puritan refugees escaping religious persecutions in Europe.
These Puritans viewed their emigration from England as a virtual re-enactment of the Jewish exodus from Egypt. To them, England was Egypt, the king was Pharaoh, the Atlantic Ocean was the Red Sea, America was the Land of Israel, and the Indians were the ancient Canaanites. They were the new Israelites, entering into a new covenant with God in a new Promised Land.
Thanksgiving – first celebrated in 1621, a year after the Mayflower landed – was initially conceived as a day parallel to the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur; it was to be a day of fasting, introspection and prayer.
Writes Gabriel Sivan in The Bible and Civilization (p. 236):
"No Christian community in history identified more with the People of the Book than did the early settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who believed their own lives to be a literal reenactment of the Biblical drama of the Hebrew nation... these 茅migr茅 Puritans dramatized their own situation as the righteous remnant of the Church corrupted by the 'Babylonian woe,' and saw themselves as instruments of Divine Providence, a people chosen to build their new commonwealth on the Covenant entered into at Mount Sinai."
During the Puritan Revolution in England, (1642-1648) some Puritan extremists had even sought to replace English common law with Biblical laws of the Old Testament, but were prevented from doing so. In America, however, there was far more freedom to experiment with the use of Biblical law in the legal codes of the colonies and this was exactly what these early colonists set out to do.
The earliest legislation of the colonies of New England was all determined by Scripture. At the first assembly of New Haven in 1639, John Davenport clearly stated the primacy of the Bible as the legal and moral foundation of the colony:
“Scriptures do hold forth a perfect rule for the direction and government of all men in all duties which they are to perform to God and men as well as in the government of families and commonwealth as in matters of the Church... the Word of God shall be the only rule to be attended unto in organizing the affairs of government in this plantation." 1
Subsequently, the New Haven legislators adopted a legal code – the Code of 1655 – which contained some 79 statutes, half of which contained Biblical references, virtually all from the Hebrew Bible. The Plymouth Colony had a similar law code as did the Massachusetts assembly, which, in 1641 adopted the so-called "Capitall Laws of New England" based almost entirely on Mosaic law.
Without the Jewish Oral Tradition that was crucial to understanding the Bible, the Puritans were left to their own devices and tended toward a literal interpretation. This led in some instances to a stricter, more fundamentalist observance than Judaism had ever seen.
The Hebrew Bible also played a central role in the founding of various educational institutions including Harvard, Yale, William and Mary, Rutgers, Princeton, Brown, Kings College (later to be known as Columbia), Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth etc. Many of these colleges even adopted some Hebrew word or phrase as part of their official emblem or seal. Beneath the banner containing the Latin "Lux et Veritas", the Yale seal shows an open book with the Hebrew "Urim V'Timum", which was a part of the breastplate of the High Priest in the days of the Temple.
Columbia College seal
The Columbia seal has the Hebrew name for God at the top center, with the Hebrew name for one of the angels on a banner toward the middle. Dartmouth uses the Hebrew words meaning "God Almighty" in a triangle in the upper center of its seal.
So popular was the Hebrew Language in the late 16th and early 17th centuries that several students at Yale delivered their commencement orations in Hebrew. Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Brown, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Pennsylvania taught courses in Hebrew – all the more remarkable because no university in England at the time offered it. (In America, Bible study and Hebrew were course requirements in virtually all these colleges and students had the option of delivering commencement speeches in either Hebrew, Latin or Greek.) 2
Many of the population, including a significant number of the Founding Fathers of America, were products of these American Universities – for example, Thomas Jefferson attended William and Mary, James Madison Princeton, Alexander Hamilton King's College (i.e. Columbia). Thus, we can be sure that a majority of these political leaders were not only well acquainted with the contents of both the New and Old Testaments, but also had some working knowledge of Hebrew.
Notes Abraham Katsch in The Biblical Heritage of American Democracy (p. 70):
"At the time of the American Revolution, the interest in the knowledge of Hebrew was so widespread as to allow the circulation of the story that 'certain members of Congress proposed that the use of English be formally prohibited in the United States, and Hebrew substituted for it.'"
Their Biblical education colored the American founders' attitude toward not only religion and ethics, but most significantly, politics. We see them adopting the biblical motifs of the Puritans for political reasons. For example, the struggle of the ancient Hebrews against the wicked Pharaoh came to embody the struggle of the colonists against English tyranny.
Numerous examples can be found which clearly illustrate to what a significant extent the political struggles of the colonies were identified with the ancient Hebrews.
Ben Franklin's proposed design for the Great Seal of the United States included Moses parting the Red Sea.
The first design for the official seal of the United States recommended by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas in 1776 depicts the Jews crossing the Red Sea. The motto around the seal read: "Resistance to Tyrants is Obedience to God."
The inscription on the Liberty Bell at Independence Hall in Philadelphia is a direct quote from Leviticus (25:10): "Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."
“Proclaim liberty throughout the land”– Inscription on the Liberty Bell.
Patriotic speeches and publications during the period of the struggle for independence were often infused with Biblical motifs and quotations. Even the basic framework of America clearly reflects the influence of the Bible and power of Jewish ideas in shaping the political development of America. Nowhere is this more evident than in the opening sentences of the Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Whereas, these words echo the Enlightenment's – specifically John Locke's – idea of "the inalienable rights of man," the concept that these rights come from God is of Biblical origin.
This and the other documents of early America make it clear that the concept of a God-given standard of morality is a central pillar of American democracy. The motto "IN GOD WE TRUST" first appeared on U. S. currency in 1864 and a 1956 Act of Congress (largely passed as a counterforce to communism) made it the official motto if the United States.
U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in his The State acknowledges the impact of the Jews:
“…it would be a mistake…to ascribe to Roman legal conceptions an undivided sway over the development of law and institutions during the Middle Ages… The Laws of Moses as well as the laws of Rome contributed suggestions and impulse to the men and institutions which were to prepare the modern world; and if we could have but eyes to see… we should readily discover how very much besides religion we owe to the Jew.”
The history of Jews in America begins before the United States was an independent country. The first Jews arrived in America with Columbus in 1492, and we also know that Jews newly-converted to Christianity were among the first Spaniards to arrive in Mexico with Conquistador Hernando Cortez in 1519.
In fact, so many Jewish conversos came to Mexico that the Spanish made a rule precluding anyone who could not prove Catholic ancestry for four generations back from migrating there. Needless to say, the Inquisition soon followed to make sure these Jewish conversos were not really heretics, and burnings at the stake became a regular feature of life in Mexico City.
As for North America, the recorded Jewish history there begins in 1654 with the arrival in New Amsterdam (later to be known as New York) of 23 Jewish refugees from Recife, Brazil (where the Dutch had just lost their possessions to the Portuguese). New Amsterdam was also a Dutch possession, but the governor Peter Stuyvesant did not want them there.
Writes Arthur Hertzberg in The Jews in America (p. 21):
"Two weeks after they landed, Stuyvesant heard the complaint from the local merchants and from the Church that 'the Jews who had arrived would nearly all like to remain here.' Stuyvesant decided to chase them out. Using the usual formulas of religious invective – he called the Jews 'repugnant,' 'deceitful,' and 'enemies and blasphemers of Christ' – Stuyvesant recommended to his directors... 'to require them in a friendly way to depart.'"
The only reasons the Jews were not turned out was that the Dutch West Indian Company, which was heavily depended on Jewish investments, blocked it.
By 1776 and the War of Independence, there were an estimated 2,000 (mostly Sephardic) Jews living in America, yet their contribution to the cause was significant. For example, in Charleston, South Carolina, almost every adult Jewish male fought on the side of freedom. In Georgia, the first patriot to be killed was a Jew (Francis Salvador). And additionally, the Jews provided significant financing for the patriots.
The most important of the financiers was Haym Salomon who lent a great deal of money to the Continental Congress. In the last days of the war, Salomon advanced the American government $200,000. He was never paid back and died bankrupt.
President George Washington remembered the Jewish contribution when the first synagogue opened in Newport, Rhode Island in 1790. (It was called the Touro Synagogue and it was Sephardic.)
He sent this letter, dated August 17, 1790:
"May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in the land continue to merit and enjoy the goodwill of the other inhabitants. While everyone shall sit safely under his own vine and fig-tree and there shall be none to make him afraid."
Washington’s reference to the "vine and fig-tree" comes from the words of prophet Micah prophesying the Messianic utopia:
But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow to it. And many nations shall come, and say, 'Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths; for Torah shall go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.' And he shall judge between many peoples, and shall decide concerning far away strong nations; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig-tree; and none shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken it.
This was an interesting choice of words on the part of Washington, but, as noted above, it is not surprising in light of the enormous influence that the Hebrew Bible had on the pilgrims and on the founding fathers of the new nation..
The Touro Synagogue, Newport, Rhode Island.
John Adams, who said some highly complementary things about the Jews, also noted that "it is very hard work to love most of them [the Jews]. And he looked forward to the day when "the asperities and peculiarities of their character" would be worn away and they would become "liberal Unitarian Christians."
The birth of American democracy marks the first time in history that Jewish ethical ideas were legally enshrined into the laws of a non-Jewish nation, contributing to the moral underpinnings of the United States.
The following quote from John Adams, in a letter to F.A. Van Der Kemp, 16 February 1809, is a fitting conclusion:
"... I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist of another sect... I should still believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate for all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization…
They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this earth. The Romans and their Empire were but a bauble in comparison to the Jews. They have given religion to three quarters of the globe and have influenced the affairs of mankind more, and more happily than any other nation, ancient or modern." As quoted in Allan Gould’s What Did They Think of the Jews, (New Jersey, 1997), pp. 71-72.
Click here to download a PDF e-book version of this article.
Encouragement for Lonely Truth-Tellers
Remember what Hashem told Yirmiya when he was in despair
Have you felt isolated over the last few years?
Were you unwilling to allow your sinuses to be regularly invaded with PCR tests? Were you unwilling to cover up your Tzelem Elokim and suffocate yourself with ghastly masks? Were you unwilling to be locked down like a criminal and robbed of your most basic G–D-given freedoms? Did you refuse to get injected with Amalek juice, no matter how much they cajoled, pressured, threatened, and punished you?
Did you suffer for it? Were you treated abusively by strangers and loved ones alike? Did you lose relationships that were precious to you? Were you persecuted? Were you made to feel like an outcast in your own society?
Did you try to speak out and rescue others from physical and spiritual harm in spite it all?
Were you generally unsuccessful? Do you feel like it only brought more abuse and persecution upon you for nothing? Did it make you even more isolated, perhaps irreparably so?
Do you feel like you failed? Do you feel like it was all a waste?
What about your efforts to reach people about the true history and nature of the Erev Rav Faux-Jewish State, the Haganah-turned-IDF, the October 7 betrayal and cover up, pretextual wars past and present, “safety instructions”, what the Torah has to say about all this, and so much more?
Have you lost a lot of relationships, simply because you refuse to be a senseless, pom-pom waving cheerleader for a state and an army that has consistently failed you and betrayed you? Do people seethe at you because your love for these entities is not unconditional, and you answer to a Higher Authority?
Do you feel isolated? Hopeless? Angry? Depressed? Ready to just give up?
Then this is for you.
Yirmiya had a rough career as a prophet. For forty years leading up to the destruction of the first Beis Hamikdash he delivered harsh prophecies to his people. He loved them. He agonized over the terrible fate that awaited them if they didn’t change their ways.
They did not love him back, at least not once he started rebuking them. Suddenly his own townsmen, including his own family, conspired to poison him.
(They planned to invite Yirmiya to a meal and prepare his food with a slow-acting poison that would create plausible deniability that he had been murdered — the sort of poison people no longer believe might be deployed in pharmaceutical products, food additives, consumer products, and chemical clouds in the sky.)
Hashem saved Yirmiya from that conspiracy theory, but Yirmiya continued to be rejected, mocked, shamed, cursed, threatened, beaten, incarcerated, and almost killed.
And for what? For warning people he loved that they were in danger, that they were making poor decisions, that they were going against the Torah, that the establishment was misleading them, that many of the “leading rabbis” were false prophets who sold their souls and sold them out. His warnings were credible, if only they would listen.
Yirmiya wasn’t angling for anything. He wanted nothing for himself, just for people to listen to what he had to say, with a modicum of decency and respect, and take his words seriously.
There was no reason for his family, neighbors, and the average Jew on the street to hate him. But they persecuted him day after day, until he finally cried out to Hashem in despair.
Hashem’s response really hits home for me, and I try to keep it in mind when I also feel “what’s the use”.
I’ve been looking forward to teaching Yirmiya chapter 15, and tonight was the night. It’s embedded above and on Rumble here. Trust me, it will really inspire you.
Here’s a related article from 2021, “Frustrated? Learn from Yeshaya”:
Are you feeling frustrated? Do you feel that you’ve wasted your time over the last couple of years (or even longer) trying to get through to people? Do you believe it was all for nothing?
The navi Yeshaya felt the same way:
讜讗谞讬 讗诪专转讬 诇专讬拽 讬讙注转讬 诇转讛讜 讜讛讘诇 讻讞讬 讻诇讬转讬
And I said I toiled in vain, I used up my strength for emptiness and for nothing... (Yeshaya 49:4)
Day in and day out Yeshaya was warning the people and exhorting them to do teshuva. He probably influenced some people, but overall his efforts were unsuccessful. What is the point of spending your life warning people who never listen, resent you, and even wish to harm you? Yeshaya was troubled by these very thoughts.
Then he continued in the same pasuk:
讗讻谉 诪砖驻讟讬 讗转 讛’ 讜驻注诇转讬 讗转 讗诇讛讬
Indeed, my judgment is [revealed before] Hashem and [the reward for] my work is with my G–D.
Yeshaya took solace in the knowledge that he had done his job faithfully. Hashem would reward him in full even though the people did not listen to him; that was not his responsibility.
It is not our job to convince people, which is not in our power. We are responsible only to share the truth. As frustrating as it can be to be ignored, insulted, mocked, slandered, bullied, and abused, this is an occupational hazard of following Hashem in the present time. Hashem is absolutely lovesick with us for all that we are doing in His service.
In fact, in a certain sense our service is superior to that of the prophets. They were explicitly charged to deliver messages to the people, messages which were generally unwelcome. The prophets had no choice in the matter; a prophet who refuses a mission is liable for death at the hands of Heaven.
We, on the other hand, were not instructed to warn people day after day. We could easily absolve ourselves from this unpleasant, even dangerous task, especially if we see little fruit from our efforts. Yet we continue to stand for Hashem and try to awaken others.
Do you think Hashem doesn’t notice? Do you think this counts for nothing?
Hashem responds to Yeshaya:
讜讬讗诪专 谞拽诇 诪讛讬讜转讱 诇讬 注讘讚 诇讛拽讬诐 讗转 砖讘讟讬 讬注拽讘 讜谞爪讬专讬 讜谞爪讜专讬 讬砖专讗诇 诇讛砖讬讘 讜谞转转讬讱 诇讗讜专 讙讜讬诐 诇讛讬讜转 讬砖讜注转讬 注讚־拽爪讛 讛讗专抓
Is it trifling for you to be My servant? To establish the tribes of Yaacov and bring back the besieged of Israel? [Behold] I will make you a light of nations, so that My salvation will be until the ends of the earth. (Yeshaya 49:6)
Not only would Yeshaya receive the full reward for his service, despite seeming to toil for nothing, he would get much more than he ever imagined. Instead of only preaching to a generation that generally dismissed him, his words and work would live on thousands of years later, to return the Jews, inspire the nations, and bring salvation to the world.
After hearing this, it’s fair to assume that the next time a Jew made a snide remark to Yeshaya, it didn’t ruin his day.
Indeed, we find a completely different reaction in 50:6:
讙讜讬 谞转转讬 诇诪讻讬诐 讜诇讞讬讬 诇诪专讟讬诐 驻谞讬 诇讗 讛住转专转讬 诪讻诇诪讜转 讜专拽
I gave my back to those who strike and my cheek to those who ripped out my hair. I did not hide my face from humiliation and spitting.
Radak notes that it is not mentioned anywhere that Yeshaya faced such abuse – he enjoyed high social status – but it is possible that this still happened. Either way, he was willing to subject himself to that with love to carry Hashem’s message. This is a drastic change from complaining that it was for nothing.
Rashi sees in this an allusion to a dialogue between Hashem and Yeshaya at the beginning of his prophetic career. “My children refuse to listen,” Hashem told him. “My children are burdensome. [I give you this job] on the condition that you don’t get angry at them.” Yeshaya agreed.
This is an extremely timely lesson for us as well. Many of our fellow Jews, including people close to us, are refusing to listen and are being extremely burdensome. If we wish to follow in the ways of our prophets, we need to try our very best not to get angry at them. We have to remind ourselves that their bodies and minds have been severely affected. It is fair to say that many of these people have become mentally ill and spiritually distant. Whatever responsibility they bear for their behavior does not change the fact that they have been severely abused, brainwashed, and traumatized. They are sick. We will not help them or serve Hashem by getting angry at them.
It isn’t easy by any means, but we need to accept this upon ourselves.
Hopefully, if nothing else, we will be able to convince them not to get angry at us, either. If we can agree on little else at the present time, hopefully we can agree on that. That alone would be a game-changer.
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One additional message of support. Even if we remain unpopular to the end of our days, we should not despair. The Gemara in Shabbos 153a teaches in the name of Rav that we can tell from a person’s eulogy whether he is destined for the world to come. If the attendees are roused to emotion (even if it requires effort from the speaker) it is a sign that he has a place in the world to come, otherwise not.
When Abaye heard this teaching, he was very disturbed. His teacher, Rabba, was hated by the Jews of Pumbedisa, his province, for they were cheaters and Rabba rebuked them. Who would be roused at his funeral?
Rabba reassured his student that he would have two such people, Abaye and Rabba bar Rav Chanan. That would be sufficient.
Hopefully we will be universally loved for our efforts to bring people closer to Hashem. If not, so be it. We are not trying to win a popularity contest or an election. If we were, we wouldn’t be who we are, and our messages would have no meaning. Even if virtually no one appreciates us, we should follow in the footsteps of Rabba and keep trucking on.
High-profile globalist actor: Jews should keep Shabbos!
Stupid people: That’s so exciting! Moshiach!
Me: How about you keep the 7 Noahide laws, then get back to me?
