Exposing the Lies We’ve Been Told About Covid, Shutting Shuls, Supposed “Upticks” and More
Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Smith
Passaic Park, New Jersey
(973) 771–6503
PassaicClarity@gmail.com
By the Grace of G-d
10 Elul 5780
August 30, 2020
L’chvod* HaRosh HaYeshiva, Rabbonim[1], Members of the Passaic-Clifton COVID-19 Task Force[2], Members of the Medical Committee of the Passaic-Clifton COVID-19 Task Force[3], Shlita[4]:
Sholom u’vrocho,
It is imperative that this community be restored to a rightful setting where Torah is paramount, and individuals are respected.
In the ongoing debates about masks and coronavirus vaccines, I suggest that the masks and the prospect of vaccines are a valid concern but still is a distraction. The real issue is that the government has decreed who is essential and who is not essential. Essential people can make a living. Those decreed non-essential cannot make a living and either starve or become a ward of the state. There is no basis or definition in any law, just decrees. The fact that the Jews are not singled out is no comfort – this is war against humanity. The danger of such decrees cannot be overstated, and they must be rejected.[5]
There is no place in Torah for a Jewish community to be governed by a committee of medical doctors. Nor by an unelected committee composed of Rabbonim, politicians and doctors.
The concept of a doctor in Torah, and the permission to heal, is based on a personal relationship between a doctor and an individual patient where the doctor is both an expert in a relevant disease and knows the patient personally. Such a doctor is a doctor that a Rov has permission to listen to and to take into consideration the medical insights of the doctor as to that patient. However, a doctor cannot make decrees for a community of individuals that he has never met, or knows nothing of their health, and/or regarding a disease that he has no personal experience with.
Civilization is going through the writhing pangs of the establishment of public health supremacy which intends to overrule all other considerations, including Torah. Public health is not ‘refuah’ in Torah. Public health is not a substitute for Torah.
In Round One of the Public Health decrees, the Rabbonim were overwhelmed with pressuring doctors and threats of ventilator shortages[6] and news reports of hospitalizations and deaths and not given proper access to evaluate the metzius hadevorim and innocently made decisions accordingly. But there has now been plenty of time to become knowledgeable and there remains time to use the remaining days and weeks to become knowledgeable.
A Rov must educate himself in the metzius hadeovrim. He must also educate himself in the skills necessary to understand and evaluate the metzius hadevorim. For example, in the current situation, a Rov must learn basic statistics and understand a numerator and a denominator and the elements that contribute to the increase and decrease of each of those and what effect that has on such output numbers as infection rates and mortality rates. Just as a Rov cannot make a ruling in industrial kashrus without taking the time to investigate and understand modern food production methodologies, so too a Rov cannot merely ratify the recommendations of a doctor or a group of doctors who have been trained and influenced in universities and training programs to further the public health program.[7]
Furthermore, a Rov must investigate alternative viewpoints. Science is predicated upon a process of hypothesis and challenge. It is impossible to claim that a decision is made based on ‘science’ if no challenge is allowed or investigated. Just as a Dayan cannot make a ruling without hearing the opposing side, decrees cannot be made upon the people, if they can be made at all, without a thorough investigation as to whether Torah and the metzius hadevorim support such a decree.
A Rov must research and understand the cruel history of public health and its methods and goals. That is part of the metzius hadevorim.