Op-Eds

Although my wife and I are proud residents of the great New York City urban wonder, we realize that our children desperately need a change of scenery during the summer. They need to be in a place they can play, relax, reenergize and be inspired. While day camps provide this experience for younger children, children beyond this age are stuck; the one place they can go for a summer break is sleepaway camp.

We all know the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. It is not just a children’s story. Rather, it is an eternal story about human nature. If people are surrounded by a mass or a mob who speak nonsense as a Truth — with a capital “T” — then perfectly sensible people who internally know better will fall into line and babble the same “Truth.”

The Emperor is naked. And as to those who now proclaim “America has systemic racism,” that is a lie, a damned lie. It is a lie about America, and it is a damned lie about Americans. Racism is not “systemic” in America. It does not permeate the System. We Americans are a good people. We just are.

The ideal of Justice is characterized and epitomized by that blindfolded lady holding balanced scales. The lady can spend her time weighing the scales while blindfolded because she is not concerned that someone will throw a Molotov cocktail at her. The kind of vicious animal who would torch the restaurant of an innocent African-American family is an evil Satan.

For Orthodox Jews, prayer needs to occur at certain times, in a certain order, with a certain text and with certain participants. It is not up to us to make changes to suit our preferences.

The entire scene is so surreal and incredibly bizarre – so absolutely crazy – that it begs for explanation. Some have suggested that these politicians and their ilk in blue states have purposefully made things as bad as possible in an effort to destroy the country and thereby blame President Trump as we head into elections.

Rav Meir Kahane Hy”d (may G-d avenge his blood) was the bugaboo for the Israeli Left and their exaggerated cries that “Israeli Democracy” is imperiled. But the Left never lost the right to compete fully and to overthrow the freely expressed will of the majority, and Israeli democracy has not been infringed. Rather, the once-dominant Labor Party seems to have died on its own, the result of decades of wrong-headed policies, promulgated by party heads who were simply wrong.

Cuomo’s own government admits to nearly 6,000 of the killings attributable to his order. The data are so shocking and indefensible that he does not count among his nursing-home killings any senior who contracted COVID-19 in a skilled nursing facility and thereafter was removed to die in a hospital. No question that the honest tally is closer to 10,000 Cuomo killings.

It used to be, not all that long ago, that the main difference between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox was the level of mitzvah observance. But on matters such as Israel, intermarriage, social issues, and family values, we had a lot in common. Alas, that is all history. On all these matters, we are now poles apart. We must face the reality that this is the hard truth.

It goes back to Pavlov’s experiment: if you continue to reward bad behavior you’re going to get more bad behavior. And so finally we got an adult in the house who told the kid no. And the kid threw a tantrum for a little while… and then the adult went ahead and said no, and then he spanked him. Mr. Abbas finally realizes he doesn’t have the high ground.