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.

Love Yehuda Lave

Join my blog by sending me an email to YehudaLave@gmail.com

COVID-19 isolation period to be shortened to 12 days starting Thursday

According to Health Ministry officials, in about two months, the isolation period is expected to be shortened to 10 days, similar to the current model used by some countries in Europe.

By IDAN ZONSHINE

After a long period of deliberation, Israel's Health Ministry decided to shorten the mandatory coronavirus isolation period from 14 days to 12 days, provided the patient has received two negative tests, N12 reported on Sunday evening. Under the new guidelines, isolated individuals who undergo two negative tests during their isolation will be able to request to end their isolation after 12 days, instead of two weeks.

The new guidelines will take effect on Thursday, under which people who receive a negative result on the first or second day of isolation, and another negative result on the tenth day, will be able to be released from isolation on day 12. According to Health Ministry officials, in about two months time the isolation period is expected to be further shortened to 10 days, similar to the current model used by some countries in Europe.Senior Health Ministry officials told N12: "We will start shortening to12 days starting on Thursday. By then, we should have finished the preparations for shortening the isolation. In two months the isolation will be shortened to ten days."The decision was first announced last week by Health Minister Yuli Edelstein, though the details of the plan were not yet final.

Nine leading academics say Health Ministry research has it all wrong with the assessment that children are drivers of infection – a conclusion that may slow down school reopening

By Nathan Jeffay

Government research that said children are more likely than adults to contract the coronavirus is “fundamentally flawed,” nine influential health researchers have claimed.

Unleashing numerous criticisms against a report summing up the research, which was shown to ministers on Wednesday, the experts said its suggestion that the dramatic rise in coronavirus cases seen in September was due to schools reopening is deeply mistaken “from an epidemiological viewpoint.”

The Health Ministry document presented figures that were said to show high coronavirus rates among kids, and warned that sending children back to schools at a time of high COVID-19 morbidity “may accelerate the spread of the virus.”

Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories

Free Sign Up

The study reported that eight percent of the 678,000 COVID-19 tests conducted on children under age 17 between January 27 to September 24 came back positive. This was 2% higher than the rate from some 2.6 million tests conducted on adults during that same period.

It claimed that children can act as “superspreaders” since 51% to 70% of them do not show symptoms of the virus, and said that in 17 cases tracked by the Health Ministry, children managed to infect over 10 of their peers.

The critics, in contrast, believe that the children play a relatively small role in spreading the virus, and the September outbreak was actually propelled more by adults infecting kids during multi-generation family vacations than by kids infecting adults.

Israeli children wear face masks on their way to school in Moshav Yashresh, on May 3, 2020. (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)

The report made such an impact when presented to politicians ahead of the coronavirus cabinet meeting on Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly expressed surprise that health experts signed off on opening kindergartens and preschools last week.

The government had been expected to open elementary schools for the younger grades at the end of the month. But there is speculation that the new report, with its cautious approach and recommendation for “gradual” reopening, is one of the reasons for Wednesday’s coronavirus cabinet meeting ending without a decision on school reopening, and that it may slow the timeline when the issue is discussed again next week.

Prof. Ronit Calderon-Margalit (courtesy of Hebrew University)

According to epidemiologist Ronit Calderon-Margalit, the Health Ministry has arrived at completely the wrong conclusions from the statistics it gathered. She told The Times of Israel that the report “seems to misinterpret data in a way that blames children in the propagation of disease.”

Calderon-Margalit, an adviser to Israel’s coronavirus czar, Ronni Gamzu, said that the report loses credibility by drawing broad conclusions for children as a whole, while medical evidence suggests that under-10s, who rarely catch the virus and infect others, differ sharply from over-10s, who reflect adult-like patterns in relation to COVID-19.

The report reflects a misconception that schools are behind the latest outbreak, she said. “The reopening of schools on September 1 was not the vector for the outbreak, and you cannot assume that closing them on the 17th was the reason for the decline in morbidity.”

Calderon-Margalit is part of a research group from Hebrew University and Hadassah Medical Center that focuses on contagion among children and has submitted findings to the government.

It has issued a response to the Health Ministry report, signed by all nine members of the group, that argued: “The data presented in the report clearly demonstrates that children are less contagious, and they most often get infected from adults, not the other way around, and that they constitute a small percentage of the super-spreaders in the population, 9.4%.”

Illustrative: An Israeli school, closed due to the pandemic (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)

The experts claimed that many of the problems with the report were in the interpretation of data, not the data itself, but they took issue with the reliance in part on serological research, which involved health services testing the blood of supposedly random samples to see if they antibodies had been developed as a result of catching the coronavirus at some point.

According to the Health Ministry, of those children who were able to determine whom they contracted the virus from, they reported that they had been infected by an adult 80% of the time, while the remaining 20% said they had caught COVID from a fellow child.

The testing took place at clinics, for patients who went for non-coronavirus matters, which, according to the critics, is not a reliable way to build a picture of coronavirus rates among children.

Ora Paltiel, professor at the Braun School of Public Health and Department of Hematology at Hadassah-Hebrew University and one of the nine critics of the government report, told The Times of Israel: “The serological study was a non-representative sample of people who came to clinics. Children do not come unless they are sick and rarely have routine blood tests, if ever. Therefore the children in the survey were more likely to be sick and were not proportionately represented in the survey.”

.

America Is Drowning In Leftist Lies

By Dennis Prager

There are conservatives who lie, and there are liberals who lie, but both conservatism and liberalism hold truth to be a supreme value. That isn’t true for leftism. Truth is simply not a left-wing value.

Lying is to the left what breathing is to biological life. That’s why the father of modern leftism, Vladimir Lenin, named the Soviet communist newspaper “Pravda,” the Russian word for “truth.” Truth is what a leftist says it is. It’s not an objective reality.

The left has always relied on lies to gain and retain power. This is as true today in the United States as it was in the Soviet Union. Here are examples of lies Americans are told they must hold lest they be removed from social media, shamed, ostracized, and even fired from their jobs. In no order of importance:

To be colorblind is to be racist.

This left-wing assertion is the opposite of the basic liberal ideal to end racism – to have everyone be colorblind, meaning we all view and judge people solely as individuals irrespective of race.

“Colorblind is racist” is not just a lie; it’s an Orwellian lie. But it’s actually normative on the left. See, for example, “Color-Blindness Is Counterproductive” (The Atlantic, Sept. 13, 2015) or the book Colorblind Racism by Meghan Burke, associate professor of sociology at Illinois Wesleyan University.

It’s fair when males who identify as females compete in women’s sports.

In Connecticut, two biological men have combined to win 15 girls state indoor or outdoor championship races since 2017. According to The Wall Street Journal, “19 state athletic conferences…allow athletes to compete based solely on their expressed gender identity.” No one with a passing acquaintance with truth could say this is fair.

The Trump 2016 campaign colluded with Russia to win the election.

This lie has permeated the American media for more than three years. There was never any truth to it. But those on the left – the Democratic Party and the mainstream media – found it a very useful claim, and they are advancing it again in the 2020 campaign.

President Donald Trump said there were “very fine” Nazis.

This is “the Charlottesville lie.” First, the media spread it, and now Joe Biden has run with it, claiming repeatedly that it’s the reason he decided to run for president. Of course, that’s a lie; Biden has wanted to run for president all his life.

At Trump’s press conference on Aug. 15, 2017, right after the Charlottesville march and demonstrations, Trump made it clear he wasn’t referring to the neo-Nazis when he said there were “very fine people on both sides.” He told the press, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally.”

He was referring to the two sides at the protest over statues. See the video “The Charlottesville Lie” by former CNN reporter Steve Cortes at PragerU.com.

Donald Trump is a dictator.

This lie has been told since before Trump was elected. It is repeated by virtually every left-wing commentator and politician. See, for example, “10 Ways Trump Is Becoming a Dictator, Election Edition” by Harvard professor Stephen M. Walt (Foreign Policy, Sept. 8, 2020) or “Donald Trump Wants To Be a Dictator” by Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland (The Guardian, July 5, 2019).

It’s a lie. The fact is no conservative American politician is a likely dictator because one of the fundamental goals of American conservatives is to shrink the power of the government. A dictatorship in America is far more likely to come from the left, which seeks to massively increase government power.

For example, as reported in Politico on Aug. 21, 2020, Biden has already pledged, “I would shut it down” – referring to the American economy and Americans’ freedom of movement – to combat the Covid-19 virus.

America is a racist society.

This is the greatest national lie since the medieval blood libel, in which Christians accused Jews of slaughtering Christian children to use their blood to bake matzah for Passover. America is, in fact, the least racist country in history.

That’s why, for example, there are so many race hoaxes – the real thing is so hard to find. Jews didn’t need to concoct anti-Jewish hoaxes to prove there was widespread anti-Semitism in Germany in the 1930s.

Ferguson was an example of racist police brutality.

The Ferguson lie is frequently cited by the left as an example of police racism, including by figures as prominent as Barack Obama. Yet, a grand jury, which included black jurors, declined to indict the white police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, a black man, because Brown had attacked the officer, sought to steal his gun, and was in the process of a second attack when he was killed.

The claim that Brown had said, “Hands up, don’t shoot” was also a left-wing lie. Brown never said it. See the PragerU video with Larry Elder.

America was founded in 1619, not 1776.

This is the infamous New York Times lie for which the Times was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. This is the same prize awarded to the same newspaper in 1932 for its horrific lie that there was no famine in Ukraine when, in fact, Joseph Stalin was deliberately starving about five million Ukrainians to death.

Leading liberal scholars of American history have condemned the Times’ rewriting of American history – that the American Revolution was fought in order to preserve slavery – as a lie.

These are just some of the left-wing lies increasing numbers of Americans believe. America’s survival depends on Americans – especially young Americans – recognizing them as such.

RABBI KAHANE’S LAST ARTICLES

Rabbi Meir Kahane, may G-d avenge his blood, wrote weekly columns for over 20 years for The Jewish Press. Below is a copy of one of his last articles which appeared in The Jewish Press. His final thoughts to all of us and what he wrote is frightening and happening today

Numbers 23:9

“Lo, it is a people that shall dwell alone and not be reckoned among the nations” (Numbers 23:9)

Numbers 23:9. The reality; the reality of Israel against the world. The reality that is so terrifying to so many; the reality that cannot go away – for upon it is based all of Judaism

I ponder the phenomenon of synagogues – including Orthodox ones – that incredibly ban me from speaking, that, in effect, have declared a view of halachic a of a rabbi and talmid chacham as banned from the synagogue. And the words of the Prophets acquire new and real meaning for me; words spoken by seers and visionaries of broken hearts, who proclaimed in their hurt: “They hate him that rebuketh in the gate and abhor him that speaketh uprightly” (Amos 5). And: “And I raised up from among your sons, prophets, and from your young men, Nazarities … but you gave the Nazarities wine to drink and commanded the prophets, saying: ‘Prophecy not’” (Amos 2). And: “For it is a rebellious people, children who lie, children who will not hear the Law of the L-rd. Who say to the seers: ‘See not!’ Who say to the visionaries: ‘Envision not, unto us correct things, speak unto us smooth things envision deceit.’” (Isaiah 30)

And so they invite the delusions and the deceit of the leaders who speak to them that which they wish to hear, and the prophet weeps and cries out: “Peace, peace and there is no peace…”

You think it pleasant to speak painful truths that cause pain to those who refuse to listen and who then react with pain and hate against the one who speaks? You think it is tranquil to be the messenger that brings forth the reaction, “Kill the messenger?” You think it is comfortable to be the one who compels the blind to see and the deaf to listen – because a Jew is compelled and commanded to love Jews – even those who defame and smear and destroy him? Hardly. But that is the decree and that is the statute of love of Jews. And that, too, is the days of yore and there is nothing new under the sun; “Hear, ye deaf, and look, ye blind – that ye may see. Who is blind but My servant, or deaf as My messenger I sent? Who is blind … as the L-rd’s servant? Seeing many things but thou observes not, opening the ears but none heareth… Who among you will give ear to this? Who will hearken and hear for the time come?” (Isaiah 42). And: “We wait for light – and behold darkness, for brightness and we walk in blackness. We grope for the wall like the blind, as if we had no eyes, we grope; we stumble at noon day as in the night….”

But though we refuse to see and hear, and though we shut out the messenger – the voice will cry out, causing pain because it itself is in pain, pain for a people that refuses to be chosen and climb the mountain.

For those who wish to see and who refuse to blind themselves to reality, it is clear that two fundamental processes are, today, unfolding for the Jewish people.

One: Events in the Middle East are leading to inexorable international pressure on Israel to make terrible, mad concessions. The “new world order” of which George Bush speaks will bring together the nations of the world – east and west, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., Moslem and Christian – to try to impose tragedy on the Jewish state and people.

Two: Events in the Middle East are joining together with the galloping economic collapse and unraveling of the social fabric in the United States to create a political explosion and horror that will bring anti-Semitism and tragedy upon the American Jew to a degree beyond his worst fears.

For those secular Jews and all the ones of little faith who perceive the Jewish people and state as similar to all the others, of course, the obvious and growing isolation of Israel and the clear and present danger to its very existence are terrifying. To such people, the fear of losing allies and especially the United States is frightening. To them, there is nothing more important than Israel’s pursuing policies that will not incur the wrath of America and the world. To them, Israel cannot exist without the support of the United States and the Western world.

For those secular Jews and all the ones of little faith who see the Jewish people in “practical” and “realistic” terms of realpolitik, the U. S. and the West are seen as home and heritage and future. There is nothing more frightening to them than the thought of a tidal wave of anti-Semitism that would threaten their lives there. To them, the fight for the preservation of Jewish life in the exile is the most important thing on their national agenda.

But for the Jews of authentic, classical Judaism it is clear that the birth and future and destiny of the Jew and his State are based precisely on isolation and on a Jewish State in which live all the Jewish people; that faith in the G-d of Israel (and, of course, Jewish strength based on that faith) is the only hope of the Jew and his State; that fear of the world and reliance on the nations and allies are not only illusions and delusions but, worse, a desecration of the name of G-d and a declaration that it is not He but human beings who hold our fate in the balance; that the gathering together of nations against Israel and the ultimate collapse of Jewish life in the exile are things that are sadly immutable.

From the birth of the Jewish religio-nation, a number of divine iron laws of history were decreed for the Jew, nation and state:

1. The Jewish people were selected by G-d to be His unique, chosen and holy people from all the nations on earth.

2. This special chosen-ness imposed upon the Jew, the obligation to accept the yoke of heaven – the laws and commandments of Torah along with the immutable consequences: Acceptance of the obligation would lead to glorious and majestic redemption, while refusal must lead to punishment and tragedy. There is no escape from this iron law of Judaism

3. The Jewish people are a people that dwells alone, separate and isolated from the nations and it is the Almighty alone who is their Redeemer and Savior – when they are deserving of it. Those who fear the nations and look to them for salvation are swamped by delusion and lack of faith in the G-d of Israel. For real faith in Him means that He is stronger than both Baghdad and Washington; that He is the Decreer and Decider of history; that if the Jew looks to Him and does His will, then and only then will the Jew be spared the tragedy that looms; that Israel must look to its own interests without fear of what the nations will say.

4. The exile – all the lands that lie outside the Land of Israel – can never be anything more than ultimate punishment and suffering for the Jew. It can never be aught but tragedy for a Jewish people commanded to dwell alone. It is not the futile fight against tidal wave of hatred of the Jew – the inevitable product of the coming U.S. socio-economic collapse – that should be the main item on the American Jewish agenda,, but rather the return home, to the Land of Israel, where the Jew must dwell alone, that should obsess us.

5. And above all, let it never be forgotten: It is precisely the isolation of the Jew and his ultimate aloneness, without allies or gentile support that is the key to Jewish redemption in this final era of redemption. It is precisely the apparent hopelessness and impossibility of Jewish survival in isolation that will most prove the Omnipotence and Kingship of the G-d of Israel.

Faith in the G-d of Israel, and not trust in the nations of the world. An end to pleading for American economic aid that, on the one hand, causes Israel to tremble lest it anger Washington and thus threaten both its alms and arms, and that also leads the Jewish state to refrain from following the normal, logical and sane policies that are its own interest. And leaving the lands of the exile, the ultimate lands of tragedy for the Jew – to come home and to be a nation that shall indeed dwell alone, fearing G-d and not the nations. That is the Jewish way. That is the only way.

“Lo, it is a people that shall dwell alone and not be reckoned among the nations.”

Indeed, how tempting and deductive to say those pleasant and soothing things that the public

and masses would like to hear; that the Jewish leaders mouth in sterility and emptiness, to the detriment of our people. But the iron law of Judaism is immutable – “if you walk in My statutes” or, “and if you shall reject my statutes…”

See you tomorrow  bli neder

We need Moshiach now!

Love Yehuda Lave